Best movie of this year hands down!

Absolutely the worst movie.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

(Flash Review)I saw Nicholson & Streep and an unknown movie title, clicked play and was ready for an acting clinic. I was not disappointed. The film opens with Jack awaking from his slumber under a blanket of cardboard, on the side of the road, in the midst of the Great Depression. There by circumstances partially within his own control as we slowly come to learn, he is there to visit his old hometown and later runs into a female friend, played by Streep, who is also down on her luck. Much of the film follows the two of them as they wrestle internal strife, try to earn a couple dollars to fill their stomachs with more booze than food and mend old relationships. Will this phase in their life lead to a happier place or drive them deeper into despair? Overall, the acting was really good but it wasn't an enjoyable watch. Not just because it was gritty and depressing but the pacing felt uneven and it failed to honestly emotionally affect me rather than superciliously.

I, like many others I assume, was drawn to this film by it's list of actors. With a cast like that it's gotta be great, right? As it turns out, not so much.The story here is simply not THAT interesting to warrant a run time of almost two and a half hours. A baseball player accidentally kills his child and then, in his grief, abandons his family and becomes a bum. Years later he goes back to see his wife and is welcomed home with (mostly) open arms. And things really don't develop much more than that. So A-listers, Jack Nicholson and Merrill Streep flounder around a gloomy set and try to act their way to an epic film, but they just don't have the material to work with. So you end up with a very drawn out, dreary, and unavoidably BORING movie. It's certainly not worth the time investment when there's no payoff.

Alcoholic vagabond Francis Phelan, a former ballplayer and family man before the Depression, returns to the haunts of his hometown, yet is besieged by ghosts from the past. William Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel doesn't necessarily make for gripping movie material--all the drama seems to be in this character's past--while the overlay of the bleak economic times coupled with Phelan's ruinous drinking habit diffuses any hope this will be a thoughtful or provocative exercise. Instead it's just a downer, and a very long one at an overstretched 143 minutes. Jack Nicholson (though Oscar-nominated) hasn't much hope in bringing out the complicated psyche of Phelan; Nicholson tries, but he's too modern, and his inflections too familiar, to be convincing in this bleak milieu. Better is Meryl Streep as Phelan's ailing bar-friend who used to be a singer. Streep, who also received a nomination, doesn't have nearly enough screen-time to carve out a three-dimensional characterization, but what she leaves us with is memorable and moving nevertheless, particularly in her "He's Me Pal" fantasy song number. Argentine-born director Hector Babenco would seem an odd choice to helm a picture about very American depressions, though he certainly understands squalor, disease, and personal redemption, and parts of the film pack an honest punch. However, "Ironweed" is too lofty or pretentious, and too cluttered with emotional signposts, to make a genuine connection. The brown and gold-hued cinematography by Lauro Escorel is striking at first but eventually tiresome, and Babenco's pacing is so carefully derived that it embalms the proceedings. ** from ****

Does anyone else find odd the idea of a multi-million dollar, star-driven melodrama pretending to recreate the lives of penniless, alcoholic vagrants in the Great Depression? Judging from its subject matter (not to mention the punishing length and leisurely pace) this is clearly a film aspiring toward loftier goals than mere box office commerce. William Kennedy's screenplay, adapted from his own Pulitzer Prize winning novel, is perhaps too faithful to its source (the entire book could probably be read in less time than it takes to watch the film), and the dramatic impact of his story is handicapped by celebrity casting. Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep both give (typically) vital performances, but our awareness of them as movie stars keeps the joyless reality of the scenario at arms length, where it's easy to admire their skill as actors without having to get involved in the plight of their characters. Some rich period detail, a lot of verbal exposition, and an atmosphere of despair so vivid you could slice it with a knife add up to a film with no shortage of prestige, but not much in the way of entertainment.