The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie

At the beginning of this movie we meet Charlie, a hot headed teen who is constantly fighting at school. His home life is miserable. His father is an equal hot head who argues constantly with his mother driving her to drink. To make matters worse he's just fallen in with a group of troublemakers. He gets blamed when one of his friends steals a purse. The principal, played by James Caan, agrees not to suspend him if he works off his debt to the purse's owner, Mrs. Ritchie (Gina Rowlands).

Mrs. Ritchie proceeds to teach Charlie about living and caring for each other.

The movie start out poorly. The setup of Charlie's character is painful and the scenes with his friends cliché and over dramatized.

However, when Gina Rowlands appears on the screen as Mrs. Ritchie the movie takes a wonderful turn. Mrs. Ritchie is offbeat and colorful; her zeal for life intoxicating.

Don't let the start of the movie keep you from enjoying a delightful and uplifting film.

This is one of those films that you say to yourself, "Wow!.... What an emotionally satisfying film!". It is definitely filled with great emotional highs and lows.

While the performances were very good in general (Especially Gena Rolands!). Kevin Zegers(Charlie) came up a bit short.

The Romantic Quality of the screenplay all be it a bit mushy,is exactly the quality that I think you should come away with. It gave me tears in my eyes. It has a certain spiritual undertone as well. It makes one think about how our weaknesses can be our strength.

All and All I'd give it a score of 7.5 out of 10.

this movie was amazing, and Kevin Zegers made it 132843723094 times better. he is the only reason i knew about this movie, but i did end up liking it. yeah i have and obsession with Kevin Zegers. Justin Chatwin is also hot but he's hotter in war of the worlds.The incredible Mrs Rithie was touching.that sounds super nerdy( and so did that).i hated the dad, and the sister. what the heck was she wearing. but i guess that doesn't matter. Well the movie was really good and definitely worth watching. I'm only writing this much because it says it has to be ten lines of text. just so everyone knows. yeah i'm retarded. omg one more line, i serously am confused. because I've seen other ppls shorter comments.

"The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie" was a great film and I think if it would have had a cinema opening, it would have done well. It was one of the best movies I have seen in a while. The gorgeous Kevin Zegers as "Charlie" and lovely Gena Rowlands as "Mrs. Ritchie" were perfectly cast. I suggest that everyone watch this film.

With two seasoned veterans on the bill, Gena Rowlands and James Caan, (and an up and coming actor like Kevin Zegers) one would expect a certain quality of acting in this movie... and it does not disappoint. The simple yet beautiful story was handcrafted by Paul Johansson (who was also the films director) and it seems that he took as careful care in the casting as he did in his writing. Each character struck me as unique and genuine and all of the actors served the story rather fittingly. Leslie Hope deserves special notice for her portrayal of Charlie's mother; she is near psychotic most of the times and yet Hope manages to keep things from going over the top. One of the highlights of the film for me was observing the relationship between Mrs. Ritchie's handicapped sons, played by Jeremy Raymond and John Speer. Jeremy Raymond, who I've discovered is actually not handicapped at all, was a delight to watch whenever he was on the screen and a few of the scenes between him and Speers were quite touching in their honesty. This is a wonderful movie that is constructed with great care and it is a fine example of what Canadian film is about.