The movie was entertaining. The scenery was beautiful. The music was great. It is the kind of movie that you would like to see on a weekend when unwinding. The characters were interesting. Aidan Quinn is excellent as a mountain native and war veteran. His bitterness, cynicism, and yet still loving his roots, was good. He was a free spirit, but at the same time very shrewd and wise of the world. Janet McTeer plays a naive music professor who thinks that she is going to find a "paradise" in the woods of North Carolina. There is a purity to the story that is good. The people of the mountains are nice, but they are still wary of outsiders. They know well what it is like to be cheated by developers and progress. The main thing that seems a bit too staged and Hollywood is the ease with which every mountain person wants to sing and dance for her. It was like a Rockwell painting - charming, but not realistic. You just don't go out to the woods and expect miracles to jump out at you. Everyone was not a talented musician. Some people were just hard working and wary of the world. That part of the movie was never really displayed.
Review of Songcatcher
