Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Now there's nothing wrong with uplift, except that exhortations customarily are banal. That is, the end is nearly destroyed by the means.

Richard Bach's best-selling parable for freshmen becomes on screen a very spelled-out allegory, complete with flat voice-overs and pretentious Neil Diamond soundtrack.

This has got to be the biggest pseudocultural, would-be metaphysical ripoff of the year.

The film, at any rate, closely resembles every other predigested, semiliterate, mistily mystagogic piece of hope-mongering with which seekers after Great Life-giving Truths in small packages have been traditionally gulled.