Movies that will never have an Oscar do not possess the following: 1. Extensive gripping plot of historical nature, or about a famous personality (read `The English patient,' `Braveheart,' `Titanic,' `Beautiful Mind') 2. Unreal or almost unreal plot twists (read `Lord of the Rings') 3. Clearly morally defined characters (read Billy Zane character in `Titanic;' Mel Gibson's character in any movie he is in). You either love them or hate them. 4. Long viewing time. 5. Sense of the plotline ending at the end of the movie (you pretty much can picture the life of Forrest Gump after the movie end, and you know what's going to happen to Rose from `Titanic', at least key things) The movie `She's so lovely' is a tale of Eddie (Sean Penn), a drunk with a mental problem, and Maureen (Robin Wright Penn), a drunk with lots of other problems. They are in love, he goes to mental institution, she is pregnant, but marries another, Joey (Travolta is for once in a movie he really belongs in, and does a terrific job). Ten years later, Eddie comes out and comes back for Maureen. All of these characters are semi-crazy, semi-abusive, semi-kind, semi-dumb. How can you love someone who hit his wife then tells her he loves her? And how can you not love that same person for being a dad to 3 little girls, one of them not his own? How can you forgive a woman for divorcing her husband while he is sick, and then not sympathize with her when she paid for it by 10 years of being separated from the man she loves? And what to think of a man who comes to take a woman from a family she made without him because he clearly sees her love for him? Penn's performance is as always vulnerable and smart. Wright Penn is the most under-appreciated actress of our time; I still cannot forgive the aforementioned academy for not even nodding her way with her brilliant performance in `Forrest Gump.' These two actors can act with their eyes alone, seems fitting that they are together also in real life.
Having said all that, `She's so Lovely' is clearly not an Oscar material. It's too real. It's too good.
Having said all that, `She's so Lovely' is clearly not an Oscar material. It's too real. It's too good.