A dreary, disappointing movie

Rating: 4/10 (22 February 2006)

I had read the reviews, from friends as well as the papers and the Oscar hype and was looking forward to seeing this. Good performances go a very long way to determining my enjoyment of a movie and Joaquin Phoenix and especially Reese Witherspoon did good jobs. But the movie failed to engage me, or the 3 others I went with. Perhaps you need to be a Johnny Cash fan, the tedious songs that we had to endure throughout didn't help. He came across as a miserable character whose life wasn't really all that interesting in the end, or at least the script didn't make it so. Annoying inconsistencies were the casting of young Johnny with a perfectly normal face but Joaquin Phoenix of course has a cleft palate scar. His parents didn't seem to age at all over the 20 or so years the movie spanned. All in all I thought it highly overrated.