Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

hyped garbage

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Which is a shame considering there was so much to like. Laura Dern's performance is astonishing as the Rose of the title who has a shady past and comes to live with a family headed up by Robert Duvall and Diane Lane (her real life mother) who gives a wonderful performance also.The story is a cobweb, if story it is, I haven't read the novel,and the plot is character driven all the way.The sexual content is handled sensitively and the fact that Rose is a 'nymphomaniac' of the era - i.e. she loves sex - is understood and tolerated by the family.The eldest child, Buddy, is played by Lukas Haas who has many good performances to his credit - and has never turned down a movie role since he was five - who has an evil streak according to his mother but keeps certain secrets about Rose along with his father who also has secrets.An amazingly tolerant and lovable family headed by a father with integrity - which was a bit of a stumble for me as Robert Duvall's incessant smirking does not translate as such to me. I find it irksome - and confusing. I would have preferred a different actor in that part a la Leslie Howard from the forties.The sepia cinematography was breathtaking and the street scenes amazing as were the two actors who played the younger children.The wraparound of the story didn't work at all. Rose deserved more that a verbal dismissal at the end. And the mother vanished inexplicably. Now there was a character. Too bad the viewer wasn't respected a little more.6 out of 10 for all that.

I'm a sucker for nostalgic memoirs of childhood, but this one has little to recommend it. Lukas Haas should win a special award for "work ethic": he's hardly skipped a year for movies appearing since he was 7, and IMDb lists him with SIX in various stages of pre-production at this writing. In the present one, he's 15 playing Buddy, a Depression-era 13-y/o whose family takes in Rose, a vivacious and sexually rather uninhibited young woman, especially for that time. She "puts the move" on the father while Buddy and his sister watch, but dad is stalwart and declines. Buddy, who has no such moral qualms, does wind up with her in his bed one time, and manages to pet her to orgasm, but she returns no favors to him, though she apparently doesn't mind "doing it" with most any young man who comes along. The summer passes, or the year, or whatever it was, and everybody moves on with their lives. So what?

Rambling Rose was a wonderful, sweet movie set in the south in the 1920-1930 period...with a great cast. I can't imagine it getting any better than Robert Duvall as Daddy saying,:"Rosebud, you are as graceful as the letter S". And mother, Diane Ladd, saying to Daddy, something to the effect of "shooting him right between the eyes...with truth!" It just does not get any better than that! I loved it when Robert Duvall took on the old doctor head on...to save Rose. Lucas Hass, John Heard, and all the cast was wonderful. The dialog, the lighting, the camera work were all outstanding and all wrapped together made a memorable experience. I fell in love with this film.

I loved this movie. In updating my VHS collection to DVD I bought it a second time and was so glad that I did. I love the music score and the soft period lighting it provides in telling the story of Rose - a down on her luck teen-age almost adult girl who comes to live with a southern family during the depression in the 1930's. Although the film was edited for time (as all films are) the DVD provided more background information about the story through the commentary provided. Although I've never read the book - watching it again has made me decide that I want to. I count this movie with others of its' kind (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER to name a few) as providing a wonderful opportunity to become a part of another's family memory. These kind of movies are capable of evoking in us a remembrance of our own childhood and bringing out feelings of warmth and caring that many of us have in common.I highly recommend it for its beautiful photography and wonderful music.