11 Oscar nominations and zero win!!! Am yet to understand why - its not like the actors in the movie did any better thereafter that you can make it by giving them awards for trivial roles like it was done with Halle Berry and Denzel Washington - Whoopi, Oprah, Margaret Avery, Danny Glover etc- were all amazing - i am curious to get scripts of the discussions at the Oscars that year...... it should go into the Shoulda-woulda-coulda category for the judges....
Its an amazing book - but true to Alice Walker's style of writing she has a way of seeming like she is exaggerating her characters - so I am so glad that they screen adaptation took a few things out.
The cinematography was amazing - the African scenes live much to be desired - the African part in the book is supposed to be set in Liberia - somewhere in West Africa - BUT oh no! Steven Spielberg thinks the world is so dumb that they cant think of Africa outside of the Safaris - so yes there had to be a complimentary Zebra and wildlife scene when we all know there are none West Africa ---- and most of all why get the people to speak Swahili --- who in West Africa speaks Swahili?? I just had to get that out of the way.......
But as a story - amazing, film-making - out of this world - CLASSIC yes!!
I own it and I watch it when my soul needs some rejuvenation.

Watchable little semi-soaper, but hardly captivating. Still, two or three funny moments. What amazes me is how slippery and morally highly questionable McNicol is. She plays an invalid (a leg problem), yet she not only isn't the "ugly duckling" whom men shun, but she is even a man-eater - and we are supposed to feel for her! Oh, poor little McNicol, with her leg problem... Poor little McNicol??! She is constantly getting passes from men, and even dumps them without so much as blinking! At one occasion she even has a premeditated one-night affair with a blond stud, and then she tells her newly-found French girlfriend quite non-chalantly that it took him time to get an erection! Makes us viewers wonder why she is so leg-conscious if every guy wants to hump her. Well, almost every guy; the only guy who really shunned her after seeing her leg wrapped up in metal is the guy working on the telephone. But otherwise she seems to be doing just fine with men! No shyness, no lack of success with men, and she throws them away like toys; the way she dumped Carradine was ridiculous. Poor little invalid girl?? I don't think so. And yet we are meant to believe that this woman has a major confidence problem; hence the scene in which she prepares to start playing the flute for a solo concert and somehow manages to throw the notes on the ground out of nervousness. Nervousness?? The rest of the movie shows little or nothing that would suggest that she has confidence problems, so this flute scene is absurd and doesn't fit into the bigger picture. I was also surprised how quickly and eagerly McNicol makes friends with a French woman who is screwing a married guy. On the surface the movie would appear to be a "sentimental story of one crippled woman's struggle for acceptance" (or something like that) but it's nothing like that at all; the writer clearly shifts between this type of movie and a "screw anything that moves - it's the 80s" kind of movie - very confusing.
As far as her leg: it's not like she has a big, fat purple balloon growing on her calf muscle. She "only" has a normal-looking metal prosthetic attached to the lower part of her leg, so I really don't understand why the makers of the film try to make it seem as if she is a female Quasimodo or something, at the beginning of the film. It's not like she has a twin head growing out of her neck! Though McNicol is hardly a major catch. Kind of cutish but nothing special, quite average.
But what the hell is Carradine doing playing some kind of a (relatively) smooth guy flirting with McNicol and her pal?! This guy was in "Revenge of the Nerds"! But I guess it's the same thing with the Carradines in the movies as it is with the Kennedys in politics: no matter how ugly, unable, or dumb, all the doors are open for a career in movies and politics, respectively.
Down with nepotism.
If you want to read bogus biographies about the Carradines, and other Hollywood nepotists and morons, contact me by e-mail.