Finding Home

Lis Brenner stars as a young woman who inherits her grandmother's rustic inn in Maine and a mystery to along with it. She encounters the longtime housekeeper played by Gen Bujold and the housekeeper's nephew, an artist, whom Brenner knew as a child. Louis Fletcher plays the woman's dead grandmother. The men cast in this women's TV flick are generic, and hard to tell apart. You know the nephew, a brooding Heathcliff character, will end up with the girl but it is a long road getting there. The secret as such is hardly a secret to any half-awake viewer. The scenery is pretty, and Brenner is believable as a career girl being drawn into her small-town life. Other than that, it's not worth watching.

Finding Home was shot on an island off the coast of Maine and the photography is superb. The music is also terrific. A young woman inherits her Grandmother's coastal inn and must decide whether to keep it or sell it. Along the way she unlocks a mystery from the past. While the plot and acting are interesting enough, the pacing is slow and the dialog trite. Some scenes become repetitious and at least 20 minutes should be cut. But Finding Home captures the elusive beauty of a remote New England island summer vacation that more famous films never did (A Summer Place, Cider House Rules, The Whales of August.) I'm guessing this will go straight to video... where it will become popular with people who love that romantic "downeast" coastal mystique. (I want that pristine modified lobster boat used to ferry people to the island! )

How did this movie win an award and receive a four star rating? Was it four stars out of ten or what? It was so BAD, so unbelievably soap-opera predictable, that it had me mesmerized.

I found myself waiting desperately for the dog to return, since his acting outshone that of any of the human actors. The main character was ridiculous, her friend was so ill defined as to be non existent and her love interests were A) clichéd and B) wooden.

And what is with Genevieve Bujold? I could say that perhaps she has fallen on hard times, but her acting was as weak as the rest. I've been to high school plays with more believable characters than these.

How do movies like this get funding?

Four male writers couldn't hang any of this film together in spite of some great old stars (Louise Fletcher, Genevieve Bujold) who try their best with a leaden script and subversive fundamentalist messages.

Clichés? Let me count the ways. I believe I've never been privy to so many in this one loooooong contrived movie that must have gone straight to DVD. It wouldn't survive a Friday night at the local Odeon.

Traumatic event in childhood conveniently forgotten by the star - who by the way has to be one of the most irritating actresses ever, she ran the gamut of emotions from A to B to quote a famous critic. She squeaks her lines and does a lot of batting with the eyes. Awful to watch her.

The granddaughter is forbidden to see the grandmother as an eleven year old child but then makes no effort to see her as an adult even though she professes undying love for her? She behaves like a receptionist in her "high career" in New York, excited over her birthday and her new boyfriend, her "boss". The audience is not privy to what everyone does for a living. It is strictly so she can give up her career (in that "fundy" way) to settle down and get over that nonsense.

The caretaker-sculptor turns out to have invested in Microsoft when he was twelve (doesn't everybody?) and is now wealthy but living as a boatman/bum.

The secret was not getting worked up into a froth over. Fisticuffs a plenty and the oddest, strained dialogue. Squeaky clean too. She accuses her boss of travelling all the way to Maine so he could "jump her". Man that spun me sideways before I burst out laughing. "Jump"? Wha'? I've never heard a woman use that term. Guys, yes.

And it goes on and on and on and on and on. Each cliché heavier than the one before it until it collapses, whimpering, under the pro-life ending.

I gave it 2 out of 10. The scenery and the inn are truly lovely and so is the haunting music.

Being from Maine, I sure wanted to love this movie..but I didn't! The plot was contrived and in several ways, quite silly. The first half of the film dragged mercilessly, while at the same time facets of the plot were not fully developed, making the story line weak and non-sensical and the characters shallow. It makes no sense that this young woman who so loved and missed her grandmother would not have returned to see her as soon as she was old enough to be independent from her controlling mother, especially with the level of animosity she felt toward her mother. The film touts Amanda as being "an ambitious young executive" who has a "busy career," yet all we see of her at her job gives the impression that she is nothing but a receptionist with nothing on her mind but her birthday and her boyfriend. The false memory idea fails miserably, its "moment of revelation" totally lacking in energy and focus.

What should have been a good plot, fertile ground for a poignant and meaningful film, was sadly wasted. What a disappointment!