The 'journey' that the main character goes through is about as obvious and predictable as my mom's meatloaf. Time for everyone to sit quiet and let character X have his or her 'moment' to show what a good actor they are. And they make sure you know that. The movie is based on the 5,000-page epic and beloved book written by John Irving. So they convinced Mr. Irving to write the script as well, and he, being the author of the book, was very faithful to his novel.
Problem is, novels make boring movies.
So some scene that may have been very powerful in the book because of all the great subtext and whatnot comes across as a slow, dull scene in dire need of a car crash or meteor. Not to say that this is a very bad movie. As I said, it's nice. But it got nominated for 7 Academy Awards, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. There were all sorts of slow, touching flicks released this year just as good as this one, but they didn't have the Miramax Oscar blitz working full-throttle for them, so they didn't get nominated.