Expected more

Brilliant and touching

Best movie ever!

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I had hopes that "The Flamingo Rising" would be a "black comedy" of outrageous eccentrics trying to out annoy each other along the lines of Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in "Neighbors". The added interest of a gigantic drive in theater and a funeral parlor replacing two adjacent houses, only made the ground more fertile for dark comedy. Unfortunately my expectations were not met, because "The Flamingo Rising" has a severe identity crisis, and is a real mixed bag of underdeveloped characters and concepts. The bag includes feuding neighbors, teenage romance, marital drama, 50s nostalgia, religious guilt, and tragedy. This total mish-mash leads to a fatal identity crisis, and certainly a missed opportunity for the "black comedy" I was anticipating. - MERK

Even though the subject matter of this film was appealing, the terribly shallow character portrayals and almost cartoonish-plot & characters was just appalling.The subject matter was far too SERIOUS for the goofy way in which these characters--especially the adults--were portrayed. The father, the undertaker, the mother, and the airplane pilot all acted mostly like caricatures--buffoons. The kids seemed to have more smarts and sensitivity than the adults in this picture.Another thing that was a big turnoff was the constant HARPING about the so-called "glories of adoption" vs. biological families. Doesn't Hallmark EVER get tired of this dreary theme and clearly-political nonsense? They're as bad as ABC & BahBah Wah-Wah (Barb Walters) with their relentless cramming adoption down the throats of viewers. It sure gets old.The subject matter in this film should have been handled with more dignity and less lunacy. The ending was especially ridiculous...This movie was disappointing for all the above reasons.

Poor Larry Baker, after viewing "The Flamingo Rising" it is easy to see why he was so disappointed with this screenplay adaptation of his novel. Rather than an effective and efficient visual condensation of book, the film is more like what would result if a film company ran out of money in mid-production (with a third of the scheduled scenes still to be shot) and just assembled the available stuff into a plausible sequence. Unfortunately, the missing third contained many scenes that explain what is happening.This film might only be intelligible to Baker's readers, who can at least fill in the blanks with what they already know. They might also enjoy comparing and contrasting the film's visuals with how they pictured those things while reading the book. Non-readers will find it a strange viewing experience. You almost immediately know that it is an adaptation and not just a really disjointed original screenplay. It has a lot of interesting and well-written characters, some deep philosophical thoughts, solid acting, some relatively big names in the cast, and a charming quirkiness. But all of these elements seem incomplete and inadequately connected. By the end both readers and non-readers will be thinking: "wow-somebody sure butchered that adaptation".Brian Benden plays Hubert Lee, a white American sergeant who returns from the Korean War with two Korean infants. The war changed Hubert and his peacetime goal is to embrace life and to place a barrier between himself and death. This goal becomes especially challenging when he opens a Drive-in Theater (The Flamingo) across the street from a funeral home run by widower William Hurt.Their relationship is a symbolic conflict between life and death with Lee's wife Edna (Elizabeth McGovern) literally and figuratively bridging the chasm between the two men. The story is narrated by Hubert's adopted son Abraham Isaac (Abe) and falls into the coming-of-age genre. The film seems to be set in the summer of 1968 as the drive-in screen (the world's largest even visible to shrimp boats off shore) shows "The Graduate" and "Night of the Living Dead" among others. The family lives inside the structure that supports the screen. Abe soon falls in love with his neighbor's daughter setting up a Romeo Capulet-Juliet Montague dynamic, referenced once and then forgotten. Which is pretty much the fate of all the meaningful and symbolic elements found in the book, they are either inserted without adequate explanation or omitted entirely. Which means that very little of the book's humor makes it to the screen. Angela Bettis plays Alice, an employee of the drive-in who was originally intended to be important to Abe's coming of age. But her character has been so haphazardly reduced that she serves little purpose other than providing a chance see this talented actress in one of her early roles. Screenwriters adapting a novel are faced with the need to trim a vast amount to material to get under a 100 minute running time. Narrative can be condensed, eliminated, or translated to visual images. The trick is not so much whether something is kept or eliminated, but whether what remains provides sufficient coverage of the source material's themes. A novel with the convoluted interplay of "The Flamingo Rising" presents a considerable challenge and unfortunately the screenwriter was simply not up to the task. Bottom line, "The Flamingo Rising" can be a horrible viewing experience for the unprepared reader, but can be a satisfactory one if forewarned and expectations vastly lowered. While it is not unpleasant viewing for a non-reader, they will have little reason to reflect on the theme and will be left to simply wonder why they bothered to watch. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Having read the novel that the film was based on, I found the film a very superficial and watered down version of the story. As with all 'first person' narratives the inner voice of the book is lost, thus taking away a lot of the passion and intensity of the original. The importance of the role of Alice is lost and the loss of the sexual aspect of the story dilutes the tension and southern steaminess.