Anne Heche Movie:

Hallmark Hall of Fame O Pioneers! Reviews:
Classic, beautiful, enjoy it
2009-05-24 - This is is a visual feast of a movie, filled with great performances and a lot of historical eye candy. Yes, there are many scenes of the land, the prairie, the views- thats because the story is about the land!
The scenery is both stark and beautiful and the stories are timeless, - love, greed, loneliness, passion, longing, tragedy and joy. You have to watch and listen, much of the dialogue is taken from the book and so it sounds like it is from another time, a different cadence, with the immigrant accented speech, and long gone local customs. You will feel the cold of a winter on the Nebraska plains, the cutting wind as you bounce home over frozen ruts in an open wagon, to a sod and log house, and the never ending chores that await. l This film transports you back to take a close look at the pioneers who settled once the wagons stopped rolling and the ones who stuck and made something. You understand the generations of our forebears and what it took to first endure, then prosper, to make this country. Roll through Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri or Iowa today and think about this movie as you look out the window at the fields and cities. The performances are very good. Jessica Lange is perfect, and Ann Heche is unrecognizable, playing the spoiled, narcissistic desperately lonely and out of place half of a pair of star crossed lovers, and check out who plays the part of the Jessica Lange character as a girl. Great actress, before she got waif thin and went Holly wood. Anyway, one of my favorites, and the music is spot on, it is meant to be big and lush- like the land and the experience of being part of it.

Cheesy and Overblown
2009-04-22 - After reading the book, I thought this dumb story might make more sense as a movie, but the flick was long on overwrought music and grand vistas and extremely short on substance. There was a self importance to this Hallmark movie that promised so much more than it delivered.

I especially got tired of the same sweeping scene of ripe farmland that was shown over and over again, and the emotional theme music that was played over and over again, until my psyche was raw from the constant irritation. This one melody and one scene seemed to be used as cheap filler for a story that did not have enough meat to justify the making of a movie. I like lush cinema as much as the next person, but all this style without substance doesn't qualify in my opinion. If there had been just one more long, lingering scene of "amber waves of grain", I think I would have screamed!

The acting is unbelievably hammy, complete with copious amounts of quivering lips and eyes brimming with tears. Voices quaver as the characters wallow in sentimentality. Nothing poignant, just sloppy overemoting. The movie seemed to be going for an kind of "Out of Africa" feel, but didn't even come close. (I liked OUT OF AFRICA.)

Since this is an enduring classic book, I expect there are a lot of people who appreciate it more than I did, but I can't see how anyone could like this movie. My advice is to read the book, and if it captures your interest, then maybe (just MAYBE) you will get some enjoyment from the video. However it is not for me.