What was Rob Reiner's last noteworthy film? Was it�Ghosts of Mississippi in 1996?�The American President, the year before? 1992's�A Few Good Men? Reiner has continued to work steadily since a�phenomenal mainstream movie run in the '80s into the early '90s that included, among others,�This Is Spinal Tap,�The Princess Bride and�When Harry Met Sally..., though you wouldn't be faulted for not having paid his recent output much mind. As a director, his tendencies toward sentimentality have thickened and clotted over the years, and films like�The Bucket List and�Flipped haven't had enough else to them to balance out what comes across as cloying and clumsy at best and shamelessly pandering at worst.
The Magic of Belle Isle, which Reiner directed from a screenplay he co-wrote with�Guy Thomas and Andrew Scheinman, is as sticky-sweet and textureless as a bowl of pudding, though an amused central performance from star�Morgan Freeman continually finds nuance and the unexpected where there ultimately isn't any. The film is set in the present day despite the fact that it opens with the tinkle of the�Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby" and offers up a vision of small town life so glowing and nostalgic it's practically golden-hued, the kind in which a young girl's befriending and spending a lot of alone time with the older man who's new to the area is regarded fondly instead of with any alarm or suspicion.
Freeman plays that older man, a widowed, wheelchair-bound�former writer of successful westerns named�Monte Wildhorn who's set aside his typewriter in favor of a whiskey bottle. For a grumpy, misanthropic alcoholic, he's still awfully adorable, something that's partially due to Freeman's inherent savvy charisma but which is mostly the fault of the script, which wants to sum up Monte's frustration by having him yell in an empty room. "What's…
Ashlee Simpson Ashley Greene Ashley Olsen Ashley Scott Ashley Tappin Ashley Tisdale Asia Argento Aubrey ODay
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