voyageur0713

While the promised story sounded fascinating it was a broken promise. What started off as unsubstantiated family stories, after the filmmaker's investigation, remained unsubstantiated family stories. No real proof was offered for anything and nothing was told to us that a general knowledge of history and common sense didn't already tell us, except for a few names of people who never did make it big in their particular field.

Couple that with constantly tilting, zooming, undulating motion of the camera on mostly impersonal historic still photos, surprisingly impersonal personal photos and lifeless re-enactments, it was one amateurish waste of time.

It did contain some great period music, but we did not need the entirety of several songs playing over the dizzying camera work without advancing the story in the least.

Over all it was 85 minutes of someone completely in love with a family legend that while sad and tragic, is really very commonplace in history and could have been told in full in about 7 minutes. And should have.

.. in this lazy, uninspired, homophobic, stereotype-laden piece of sitcom dung.

Metcalfe is the only one who seems to even be trying and even she falls onto the ledge of the overacting pit the rest of the cast wallows in on occasion. There are child actors on soap operas with more subtlety than even a single moment of this show. This show, should it last much longer, could just be a career killer for a couple members of the cast. The acting is just that bad!

While pilots can be uneven and not so great, the second episode will often then clean up and correct the problem areas. Or in this case, the show sinks even further into the well of awful.

We have all seen this movie many times before: The quirky stranger comes into the life of a harried person or dysfunctional family and causes havoc and in the process helps them learn the true value of what is right in front of them if they'd only stop to notice.

Hollywood has made this same story probably hundreds of times and we've all seen it in one incarnation or another more often than we can count. Sometimes the predictably of this age old story is just so much like ticking items off a checklist that you can't turn it off fast enough.

And sometimes the predictable, feel-good story is, instead, done well and with just enough original bits that it feels like that old, stretched out, faded, fuzzy sweater you just can't part with because it is just so darned comfortable and comforting.

We all know the formula of these films. We all know how it will end. But because Uncle Nino does it with such easy charm and gentle humor and none of the cheap, emotional manipulativeness most employ -- we just don't care!

It is nice to see Joe Mantegna do something other than the typical macho roles we are so familiar with and Gina Mantegna is so natural she inadvertently puts a spotlight on how most child actors have more 'the right look' than any real acting chops.