The greatest movie ever!

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This is the best movie since I ever seen which is positive and fantastic.The girl's father is a intemperant and her mother is a woman who doesn't care about her own daughter, so at first the girl went out to play and smoked everyday.She studied very careless and had no hope about her life . But after her parent died,everything changed. She began to leave her bad friends far away and studied hard. When she told her friends that she wants to go into college and the college is Harvard,almost everyone said ,"you are crazy!" She didn't care about the query ,she just kept studying hard. She is homeless but full of hope, she just has one dream that she wants to go into Harvard. She has no money to pay for the tuition and finally she got a special scholarship because of her hard working . Yes,finally she succeed and she changed her life by her own. After watching this movie, i think maybe everyone can change their life themselves,even no parents affording. There are too much things that we don't like or don't want ,but we can't choose by ourselves. Anyway you can make your life to be the shape like your imagination. It's a fantastic movie especially for teenagers in my opinion.Every time you face some difficulties you can not stand ,then you will think about this movie, to make you cheer up!

A story for everyone. Her story shows true bravery, courage and intelligence.As I've read other reviews I saw some which questioned the ending....why didn't she finish Harvard?This is a story about Liz. This 'story' is only a part of her life as was attending Harvard. I doubt she stopped learning.The well-done story ended, but Liz, I'm sure, is doing her thing.I do look forward to hearing the 'rest of the story' just to know how many people she has touched and changed by her example.Just from this short story many people can learn to be better at liking or loving someone unconditionally.Many of us felt all the emotions when watching this story unfold--but we'll always appreciate not having lived it.It is a rare individual like Liz which takes this path--where every minute and every step in her day uncovered an incredible 'woman'. God bless her.

A remarkable story of a remarkable person. It is inspirational. While the title seems to say it all, it is all to stark. The movie does not appear to hide very much. It will stay with me for a long time. I am immensely grateful that neither I, nor my children, had to go through anything nearly as difficult as most days must have been for Liz Murray. Watching it, kind of knowing how it would end, was very difficult. I also wonder how many other children are now going through the same thing but without the astonishing intelligence of Liz Murray. I believe it should be shown in every NYC High School. If it were seen by more students and teachers maybe the drop out rate would be lowered.

What a waste. How such an incredible story could be allowed to be let down with such shoddy direction and terrible dialogue is completely beyond me. If Liz Murray is such a genius why on earth did she approve this script? A bit more development (and a new director) would have done justice to and made this piece more deserving of it's central theme.Thora Birch was good but the other performances were two dimensional at best - again I think as a result of the inexperienced direction. Kelly Lunch as her mother was overly dramatic and on the whole unconvincing.One plus is that the pace and momentum really works - the film ticks along nicely.