Silver Bells and Cockle Shells

Rating: 8/10 (19 December 2004)

This is one of those feelgood movies like, say 'Amelie' that you see and find fresh and energetic and then go back to months later and wonder what you saw in it the first time. On the other hand it's only just been released and I've only seen it once so yes, I DID, find it fresh and energetic despite being a tad formulaic. This is the second movie in a year (or just over) to portray New Jersey as Mississippi-lite, sort of WHAT IF Carson McCullers had been born in Trenton, would she still have found it chock-full of dysfunctional eccentrics. Maybe we'll never know but we sure can speculate. This time around obligatory kook Natalie Portman is Geena Davis once-removed from the Accidental Tourist (Maryland, of course, is the northernmost Southern State, so there may be a Term Paper to be written on the Migration of Southern Gothic to Northern Ga Ga). Zack Graff has, no question, written and directed a very competent and sure-footed movie which involves the viewer from Frame One - at least on a first viewing - despite that same viewer's ability to second-guess both the turns in the plot and the ending - in this case it's not the arriving it's the journey. Several posters have beefed about the ending and possibly with good reason yet nevertheless there are honorable precedents; on at least two occasions (Sabrina Fair and Love In The Afternoon, both, coincidentally starring Audrey Hepburn) no less a maestro than Billy Wilder threw in a closing scene where the hero, once it came down to the wire, couldn't bear to leave the girl (okay, who COULD bear to leave Audrey Hepburn, who, indeed, in his right mind, would even CONSIDER it for a nano-second) so the writer-helmer is in excellent company. It might have been a tad more honest if it hadn't taken so long for the penny to drop but it's a minor cavil. For a first viewing 8/10.