Steve Martin Movie:

		List Price: $21.49		Label: LifeLine Entertainment, Inc Salesrank: 116701 Released: April 1, 2003
		Used Price: $21.39
		MPAA Rating: Unrated Media: DVD

Return to Innocence - Collector's Edition DVD Reviews:
outstanding
2005-12-30 - one of the better movies i have ever seen. there are two or three cast members that need to go back to school but they hold very minor parts and anyone can get thru them. the underlying theme of this movie is man/child love but after the beginning it is not soo apparent. i almost turned this movie off about 15 minutes into it. [i had just watched 2 1/2 french speaking films] if you wtched latter days you know that even God hates the french. ha. i was really happy to see that this movie is in black and white. had it been in color it would have lost a lot of what makes this movie great. based on a true story, the starkness reminds me a little of "Citizen cane." the stories are not alike at all but the stark reality is there for both of them. this movie does not have the strange camera angles that c.k. had but the director makes a great movie with the light. this is a great movie and i thoroughly enjoyed it. we need more like this but would like to see more gay actors in them.

Very Powerful
2004-03-11 - When you aren't expecting much from an indie movie, sometimes you can be caught off guard the way I was with this one. These scenes were so powerful and in your face that it was hard to take at times. I liked the attorney the best. He was calm throughout the difficult scenes. I also thought the main boy did a nice performance. Good job all around including the dark music, which only added to the darkness of the movie.

Good premise, ok film
2004-01-28 - As the previous reviewers have stated, this is indeed a powerful film. However, it�s the premise and some (certainly not all) of the performances which make it so. The film itself leaves much to be desired. The thankfully original and wholly worthy premise is that a 13 year-old boy who was once sexually exploited by his own mother happens to be in love with an older married man who is now his counselor. There is a mutual and highly plausible love between the boy and the man. But when it�s discovered that the man has had sex with the boy, the man, of course, must pay. His job, his career, his reputation, his life with the wife he loves (who�s expecting a child), will all be lost when the news is made public. When the man dies from wounds sustained in an accident, the boy avenges the man�s accuser by claiming the accuser � not the man he loved � �molested� the boy. The remainder of the film is devoted to the accuser�s trial � and, in a nice twist, the accuser�s guarding of the boy�s �secret� from the eyes of the law, which could certainly never understand. Most of the performances in the film seem completely amateurish with the notable exception of the boy, Tommy, played with a sad, noble innocence by Andrew Martin (who has only two gratuitous underwear shots and conveys a very convincing need to be loved, really loved, throughout). The accuser, his lawyer and the trial judge also play their parts very effectively. The film�s direction, brave and welcome as it may be to present a story of this magnitude, seems far more hackneyed. The choice of black and white video filming may seem ultra cheap (the movie was never transferred to film), but it lends the atmosphere a somewhat appropriate air of exploitation documentary like you�d expect to see on late-night cable TV. But the incessant talking (everybody has A LOT to say in this film) and the annoying two takes that director Rocky Costanzo uses in almost every one of the far too long dialog scenes are unnecessary AND unartful (one speaker bathed by white, another speaker bathed in black, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth�you get the point). I�d recommend this film to any of the witch hunters out for so-called child molesters who don�t understand the potential of love that a boy can have for a man and the love that a man can have for a boy. But it doesn�t matter. The only people who will see this film � or care about its message � are the people who already agree with its premise. Interesting, none the less.

Guilty until proven innocent
2004-01-21 - Reality is what I took from watching this film. What a perfect example of how society is today. Why do so many people "assume" that a person is guilty of a crime just because they are accused? That is something I will never understand. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

matb told it like it is
2004-01-12 - Just an extremely bad movie with creapy actors that leaves you behind with a creepy feeling about the people that made the movie and you keep wondering what their intensions were.