Sadly Over-hyped

One of my all time favorites.

Boring, long, and too preachy.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I studied this film for my book "Fade to Gray: Aging in American Cinema" (2016) and found it entirely surprising. The divergent reviews that other users have shared do not surprise me; the low-budget production and emotional story are going to put off some less sophisticated viewers. Yet if you want a film that deals with the unusual subject of how to account for your life in old age (not like the films about middle-aged folks to which this is erroneously compared), then this is a sensitive and intriguing take on the subject.Kirk Douglas gives a compelling performance in his late 80s as a dying movie director confronting mystic visions of a son he never came to love, and perceptively conveys his cathartic liberation from egotism as he achieves grace in his final hours. Despite the limitations of the lengthy flashbacks to the son's life, the story comes together well, and anyone who is a parent can relate to the conclusion in which Douglas just wants his unknown son to be happy.Not many American films afford elder characters such dignified deaths. In fact, my co-author Nancy McVittie and I studied hundreds of U.S. films about older people and found very few that portrayed them dying with dignity (most of the time their deaths are dramatic and sensational, or more often, completely postponed or set off screen). This is the list we would count in the "dignified" category, although of course others are arguable:Heaven Can Wait (1943); Kim (1950); Little Big Man (1970); Being There (1979); Rocket Gibraltar; (1988); Meet Joe Black (1998); Big Fish (2003); The Bucket List (2007); Hannah Free (2009); Beginners (2010)

What a wonderful movie. I loved it so much that I never want to see it again, but I know that eventually I will pick this movie back up and watch it again. I know what you're thinking, She's crazy what's she talking about? What I am talking about is simply this, the movie made me laugh, it made me cry and it made me think all about the things that I did in life up until now. It made me think about those I left behind and or whom left me behind. It made me feel things that I did not want to feel, that I thought I had l gotten over. I do not think that I could handle watching this movie again, but I know eventually I will give it another watch or two, or three because it was that great. I loved it.

I do not know what or why Kirk Douglas or the innocent audience members could possibly have done to be punished to be held captive watching such amateurish drivel of a script and performances. Mr. Douglas despite his speech impediment due to his stroke is still light years away from this excercise in complete inanity and is the only bright spot in the whole proceedings. The script's contrivances are so obvioous that they cause unexpected laughter. When your main hero is a clod and heroine a cloddess there is very little to root for along with such arch melodramatics from the varied clichéd antoganists ie: performance arts villain, corporate nerd villain and gas station meanie villain. It gives one hope that death will release all of us from this hideous collection of vignettes that are suppose to give us a morality tale to take to heart. I would advise to take to the hills if ever you meet this mess of a movie again!

I was privileged to see this film. Centered on the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, showing the poignancy of love held at a distance by circumstance, choice and fate, Baines [KD] and his son Christopher [MG] are trapped in a perfect play all taking place in one afternoon; a lifetime taking place in a canned film tragedy. Nonetheless, the other filmic choice, comedy, is also refused. No one ends as a clown, fool, nor failure. The film maker holds us in a limnal [threshold] space between tragedy and ultimate loss and comedy and a happy ending by allowing the healing connection to release one hero [KD] into Death and one [MG] into Life and Love. Although, this is a film about a film maker, the actors live their parts, rather then play them, so as Renee says, bring tissues. This film is a guy weepie that speaks to the painful gulf between fathers and sons, and also, the gulf men create when they cannot find their way in the world and find love at the same time. Yet, Love finds all. See it.