Well, this looks like a film many people (most?) didn't get. Should have got a lot more credits than it seems to have gotten. Not sure why at all it flunked the critical course. It's quite good and seems to have been Shirley MacLaine's first directing job. So, go see it or rent it. BTW, there is nothing in it of floating in clouds of spirituality over Peru, for those who have worried about that sort of thing over the course of Ms. MacLaine's almost always very distinguished career.
The movie is kind of like a home movie done by an extremely talented director and a lot of other talented movie pros: it's not that it's amateurish at all; its rather that it doesn't try for finished Hollywood effects much. Just lets things out, sometimes to play, sometimes not. It's very, very well directed but not in a usual or common or regular sense. Shirley MacLaine may do her best at what you might call encouraging and allowing her actors (including herself) to do "fresh" things onscreen. Sort of like, "OK, go!" Really nice spirit about almost all of the show.
And, like most good or better creations, the film doesn't at all go out of its way to explain the story it's showing you. Good. That means it's real hard to put it in a category. Also Good. It's some kind of comedy AND drama, I suppose, but please don't call it a comedy-drama, I think.
The young hero, played by Alex Linz, is a quite wonderful "open" part. Again the movie does not try to explain, put words on what "exactly", "precisely" <groan> his motivations are (to win the National Catholic Spelling Bee <really>) while most of the time wearing girl-woman dress, often flamboyant. Kathy Bates as the head of the Catholic grade school he attends is wonderful, too, a quite masculine and tough (and funny) nun who just won't tolerate the boy, for awhile. And there are quite a few nice drop-ins from actors like Jennifer Tilly. Gary Sinese, who I usually think of as a great villain or great sickone, or both, is wonderful as a trying-to-be tough cop who was labelled sissy when he was his hero son's age, not least by his mother, Shirley MacLaine.
I liked David Cuminello's script a lot. Got the impression he may not have written all of it???
In all, a quite different film that is well worth watching, wherever. Far from run of the mill, as they say.
I'm a little afraid to give it the 6 rating I've put on it, but I think I should stop worrying because I am a hard grader. Somewhere between 6 and 7 is I think where it belongs, and where I hope it's getting to on IMDB.
The movie is kind of like a home movie done by an extremely talented director and a lot of other talented movie pros: it's not that it's amateurish at all; its rather that it doesn't try for finished Hollywood effects much. Just lets things out, sometimes to play, sometimes not. It's very, very well directed but not in a usual or common or regular sense. Shirley MacLaine may do her best at what you might call encouraging and allowing her actors (including herself) to do "fresh" things onscreen. Sort of like, "OK, go!" Really nice spirit about almost all of the show.
And, like most good or better creations, the film doesn't at all go out of its way to explain the story it's showing you. Good. That means it's real hard to put it in a category. Also Good. It's some kind of comedy AND drama, I suppose, but please don't call it a comedy-drama, I think.
The young hero, played by Alex Linz, is a quite wonderful "open" part. Again the movie does not try to explain, put words on what "exactly", "precisely" <groan> his motivations are (to win the National Catholic Spelling Bee <really>) while most of the time wearing girl-woman dress, often flamboyant. Kathy Bates as the head of the Catholic grade school he attends is wonderful, too, a quite masculine and tough (and funny) nun who just won't tolerate the boy, for awhile. And there are quite a few nice drop-ins from actors like Jennifer Tilly. Gary Sinese, who I usually think of as a great villain or great sickone, or both, is wonderful as a trying-to-be tough cop who was labelled sissy when he was his hero son's age, not least by his mother, Shirley MacLaine.
I liked David Cuminello's script a lot. Got the impression he may not have written all of it???
In all, a quite different film that is well worth watching, wherever. Far from run of the mill, as they say.
I'm a little afraid to give it the 6 rating I've put on it, but I think I should stop worrying because I am a hard grader. Somewhere between 6 and 7 is I think where it belongs, and where I hope it's getting to on IMDB.