Hitchcoc To summarize this wonderful movie can't do it justice because it is through Geraldine Page's Mama where the whole becomes so much greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes pain becomes comfort as we watch our days go by. Carrie Watts (Mama) has been in conflict with her daughter for years, but she is dependent on her and their fights never take them anywhere. Now aging, she wants to go back to Bountiful to try to recapture some of her youth. Of course, we have seen the them of "You Can't Go Home Again" played out so many times. But the bleakness of her "paradise" is so gut wrenching, we feel her pain, especially her trip into the old house. Even if we live for only a day, it is a new day with new challenges and excitement. The performance her by Page won an Academy Award and it was so deserved. While this film may make one sad, it's not maudlin or cheap or contrived.

writers_reign Every so often someone makes a film that is beyond praise; it doesn't happen all that often because if it did the Multiplexes would close for lack of fodder. Sometimes it's an example of sheer brilliance, Citizen Kane, for example, but often it's something deceptively simple like Cinema Paradiso, Il Postino, Le Grand Chemin. Significantly those last three titles are European (for that matter Orson Welles was a 'European' filmmaker in all but country of origin) but very occasionally an American filmmaker will produce the goods. The Trip To Bountiful is the goods. Led by a truly luminous performance that inspired the entire supporting players to raise their game. A total delight.

preppy-3 This takes place in the 1940s. Carrie Watts (Geraldine Page), an elderly woman, is living with her son Ludie (John Heard) and his wife Jessie Mae (Carlin Glynn). Ludie is henpecked by Jessie Mae and Jessie treats Carrie like dirt. All Carrie wants is to visit her home town before she dies. Ludie and Jessie won't help her so she decides to go on her own.This is one of those quiet movies that people (mostly critics) fall all over themselves praising. Page won a well deserved Oscar for this but, aside from her acting, this is a slow-moving and frankly dull tale. Perhaps it worked well on stage but it certainly doesn't transfer to film. I have no problem with quiet slow-moving movies at all as long as they're interesting or innovative. This is neither. I knew exactly where this was going and exactly how it would end up. There were no surprises at all. Page's excellent performance doesn't disguise the fact that this is a totally predictable and boring movie. Just because a movie is quiet and slow doesn't automatically make it some work of art. Worth catching for Page and Rebecca De Mornay (a passenger Page meets on the bus) but little else. To make things worse the character of Jessie Mae is so unpleasant and cruel that she becomes a caricature. I don't blame the actress Glynn for it--I blame the writing. A slow, dull, wildly overpraised movie. I can only give it a 5.

jzappa The Trip To Bountiful is an unexpectedly interesting piece of drama genuinely portraying the battle of the age groups. Geraldine Page masterfully plays an old woman who is determined to outwit her bossy daughter-in-law so that she can visit her childhood home. Her portrait of this elder is a fusion of desperation, wisdom, and all but emotion being diluted by time. There is a lot of shrewd spontaneity in her performance that challenges her co-stars. Carlin Glynn provokingly takes the part of the imposition of the succeeding generation, an interfering, self-consumed woman Page puts up with only for the sake of her son, Glynn's broodingly compliant husband, played by a very likable young John Heard.The script is exceptional in its unfussiness, as all the narrative obstructions to Page's fraught yearning to replenish herself with a nostalgic visit to her old home of Bountiful don't seem to phase her. This is a touching recognition of the seasoned nature of many elderly people, as Page, despite how miserable it must be to be intimidated by someone thirty years younger than you into remaining in their apartment passing away the time in a chair and a window, for the most part alone, as we first see her in the film, and to reminisce about the bygone times and lost relatives, is beyond the sort of anger and frustration that would set a younger person in a rut. This, however, is merely my twenty-year-old male opinion, though I would say that is a testament to the effect of the movie.Beautiful Rebecca DeMornay creates a wonderful character, a sensitive young woman who meets Page by happenstance and projects a wonderfully virginal, serene presence. She opens Page up, just as Richard Bradford's humble, taurine middle-aged sheriff does. The Trip To Bountiful is not a brilliant film. It's simply an enjoyable and engrossing piece of work.