Worst Move of the Year

Rating: 1/10 (28 December 2009)

This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen!
Simplistic,pandering, silly, plodding, inaccurate, full of awful stereotypes - painful! shameful!
Whatever is good about it - others have pointed out the great makeup for example - is way overshadowed by the utterly stupid and vacuous premise of the film. The short story may be wonderful. The conceit of the film is ridiculous. It's one of those movies that tells you the characters love each other, but we don't feel it. We are told Momma loves her Benjamin, but we don't feel it. Benjamin himself is really quite the jerk.
The heavy poorly done accents alone almost do in this one alone. I am not sure why Southern accents inspire such derision, but this movie has set back another decade or two anyone taking Southerners seriously.
I saw this because I have heretofore enjoyed all of Brad's movies. Not a fan of Cate, but she can act. They are both awful in this. I blame that on the idiotic story & execution. At its best it's sentimental, empty pap, at its worst it's pretentious, bloviated, false and offensive.