Pearl

Characters were underdeveloped, the climactic point wasn't developed enough either. It just left me hanging at the end. If the movie had been given more time, it could have been truly excellent, but there were too many characters who had conflicts/things to settle with the main character, Pearl. These never got resolved at the end. At the end I was thinking, "What about the struggle with this person? The issue this person has?" Well, you don't get to know what happens to them. So although the movie could have been great, there was about a half hour or more that seems to have been cut off at the end. The movie does draw an important point: Americans are greatly spoiled, and Pearl was a great example of this. Maybe the writer was thinking in that same spoiled mind frame, not taking to account what happens to the other characters. Hence, I give it five stars for some good parts, but really that made it all the more disappointing when a couple of main characters/issues were, for lack of better wording, just thrown out the window.

Larsen Thimpson and Anthony LaPaglia srar in this interesting drama. Thompson's mother is shot by her step father. Her mother gave a letter to her lawyer friend, and he gave it to LaPaglia. The letter states that LaPaglia is Thompson's father. She moves in with him. She goes to public school and meets Melissa Macedo who is a smart tough girl. As the story develops Macedo realizes she cannot befriend Thompson, because their worlds are too different. Thompson has a one night stand and gets pregnant. LaPaglia and Thompson bond at the grave of her mother and his unforgotton love. Is she his biological daughter? It ends with not knowing what happened with the pregnancy and the dna test. This makes the entire plot filled with no answers. Why did the step father kill her mother? Why didn't her friends stick with her? Why is LaPaglia a pariah? Why would Macedo dump her? This is very unsatisfying and frustrating, because the storyline had great potential which wasn't developed.

The acting was dreadful. Pearl could have learned responsibility at the end of the film, but she didn't. Instead, she is glorified for what she did. Life isn't that simple. The film ends too abruptly.

A startling beginning brings two characters together in a smart sensitive story of alienation and love.Director,writer Bobby Roth knows about grief and violence,but he doesn't push this in your face.Rather he puts Pearl, the young girl of the story,in the care of a self loathing drunk. Sparks fly when they meet,but the two actors -Larsen Thompson and Anthony Lapaglia , as her unwilling carer, circle each other, tentatively and we dont know what to expect. The skill of the writing and the performances, leads us to some unusual places, but slowly we begin to care about these people in a surprising way. This is not a daytime melodrama or thriller, but a subtle,enjoyable tale of kindness .

Simple plotline and the acting that never touches the heart.