rch427

If you've read the title to this film, you already know everything you need to about it. It has apples. It may have a miracle. The miracle may involve the apples. From that, you'll probably be able to extrapolate that -- like 99% of the other Japanese G-rated dramas, it will be the story of a hapless dreamer with a heart of gold who must overcome every adversity to be able to prove his worth to those around him and to save at least one family member from an illness. There will be tears. There will be innocent children Who Must Be Helped. There will be a beautiful and virtuous woman who will stand by her man. There will be townfolk who don't understand. This sort of film was made by the hundreds in Hollywood in the 1930s through '50s, which makes "Miracle Apples" all the odder, given it being made in 2013.

Yes, I realize that it's (loosely) based upon a true story. But does it have to recycle every hackneyed plot device typical to such movies? Does it have to telegraph every turn of the plot? The protagonist is so earnestly, steadfastly stupid that I found myself enjoying his failure after failure, indignity after indignity. This is partly because star Sadao Abe can be effective in eccentric roles, such as "Ichi the Unicorn" in "Shimotsuma Monogatari" (AKA "Kamikaze Girls"), but he is simply not a believable dramatic actor. His modes are binary; either shouting and nearly wetting himself with enthusiasm or morose and self-flagellating; either way, he's always turned up to eleven.

I give the film three stars for the following: a few good supporting cast members -- particularly Tsutomu Yamazaki as the father-in-law, some fantastic scenery of rural Japan, and a good overall message about organic farming -- but not about a man subjecting his family to a decade of needless poverty, given that organic farming practices were already in use in Europe and America from which he could've learned much, had he bothered to research that.

"People Will Talk" hearkens back to those classic Hollywood...oh, who the hell am I kidding: it's utter rubbish. Every second of watching it, you're slapped upside the head with the fact that it's a wooden script written by people who lacked enough wit to write for Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks, but are contractually-obligated to crank it out. Every line is a declamation with the most unnatural dialogue imaginable. This is the first time I've actually hated one of Cary Grant's characters in a film; he's absolutely insufferable, delivering one pompous pronouncement after another, through his nose. Hume Cronyn turns in a two-dimensional performance. The romance is utterly perfunctory, despite the lovely Jeanne Crain. Really, I can think of very little to recommend "People Will Talk" and I regret having wasted nearly two hours of my life on it.

YERT had the potential to be a very engaging personal journey for the three characters and the audience. Although some of the restrictions they self-imposed were arbitrary or even nonsensical, it showed that they were really trying to question the things that most of us do every day without thinking. I was enthusiastic about their journey until . . . they casually announced that Julie was pregnant. And it wasn't something they had intended, but more like "Whoops! We thought that couldn't happen!" Newsflash: women are likely to get pregnant when engaging in sexual intercourse, if they are not using birth control.

It's not the fact that she got pregnant that's the issue, but that the road trip was intended to highlight the things one can do to lessen one's impact on the environment. And what is the single most environmentally destructive decision a person can make? To have a baby. Seriously.

A study done in 2009 at Oregon State University shows that the environmental impact of *not* having a child in America is about 20 times greater than the impact of doing a whole host of environmentally-friendly things like recycling, driving a hybrid, using CFLs for lighting, etc., over the course of your entire lifetime. In other words, despite everything else that Julie and Ben may ever do that's pro-environment, by having a child, they've more than counteracted them all just by bringing another little American into existence. Is this ever even mentioned? Nope. It's as if these three environmentalists were totally oblivious to the impact of reproducing.

No, I'm not suggesting that humans should let themselves die off. But I *am* suggesting that anyone who truly wants to lessen their impact on the environment should think very seriously about the effects of their becoming a parent upon the environment. The fact that Ben and Julie were just casually treating it like a whim or something they lucked into, is galling. They had the opportunity to set an example and they blew it, big time.