Problem: 1. Dear Frankie is a sticky ball of sap, and you shouldn't let its accent or film-festival appearances convince you otherwise.
2. It's the lack of sentiment at the right time that proves to be the film's undoing.
3. It may have you reaching for your Kleenex at the end, but at least Dear Frankie triggers audience sniffles the old-fashioned way: it earns them.
4. A rarity: a heartstring-puller that's never manipulative, a tearjerker that's never sentimental or maudlin, and a drama that soars whenever it should be in free fall.
5. A bittersweet bonbon of a drama, full of the old fashioned literary touches that a well-written letter still can deliver in the age of e-mail.
6. Mortimer creates a complex and sympathetic portrait of a mother struggling to give her son anything she can, while McElhone portrays the son as a wise, perceptive lad who can handle more challenges than his mother is willing to allow.
7. Dear Frankie will win you over in spite of your reservations.
8. As the story takes some surprising turns, it works like a slow infection: Patient audience members may find themselves awakening to the story in much the same way the characters awaken to their own capacities for tenderness.
9. The pain that's evoked in this small, warm film -- the deep and unspoken yearning of child -- is as universal as it is heartbreaking.
10. A small movie with a big soul and no easy formula for the happiness of its big-hearted characters.
What is the consensus?
****
Answer: Dear Frankie is a small, good-hearted film with fine performances.


Problem: 1. Cusack could do for parenting movies what he did for romantic comedies. This is a rocky start.
2. No one in the movie speaks like a real person. Even the youngest cast member talks as if footlights and a proscenium hemmed him in.
3. Poorly adapted from David Gerrold's acclaimed autobiographical novel, this sappy comedy-drama about a widower who adopts a special-needs child makes a number of key changes and consequently misses the point of Gerrold's heart-tugging tale.
4. If all this is supposed to be so life-affirming, how come I envied the dead dog?
5. Everybody is very earnest, too earnest.
6. In this abandoned-kid-who-thinks-he's-an-alien mush-fest, Martian Child doesn't offer much beyond its small-screen sensibilities.
7. Has enough wit and unpredictability to hold your attention.
8. Martian Child wants to make us cry. It nearly made me gag. This is an exercise in shameless and inept emotional manipulation.
9. It's off in many directions -- false in its details, false in its relationships, false in its emotions -- but probably the first and worst thing that needs to be said about it is that it's also overlong and dull.
10. Cusack and Coleman make this whimsical trip worthwhile.
What is the consensus?
****
Answer: Despite some charms, overt emotional manipulation and an inconsistent tone prevents Martian Child from being the heartfelt dramedy it aspires to be.


Problem: 1. Frost/Nixon could be the best political film in a year that's had more than its share of good ones.
2. Avoiding staginess even as the subject matter threatens to turn it into such, Ron Howard opens up the film's world through Salvatore Totino's glossy cinematography and a firm handle on his mise en scene.
3. Remains an intelligent, evocative reminder of simple television appetites and the dynamism, the pure drilling ecstasy, of journalistic hunger.
4. It seems like an exercise mostly for its own sake. But there is also a sense of security with its own limitations.
5. Sometimes I worry that Ron Howard actually listens to every dumb 18-year-old drunk kid who tells him how to edit his movies
6. The film begins as a fascinating inside look at the TV news business and then tightens into a spellbinding thriller.
7. Howard keeps the pace brisk, light when it needs to be, heavy when that's called for. Along with Langella, he turns Frost/Nixon into one of the most entertaining history lessons imaginable.
8. Anchored by an outstanding performance by Frank Langella, this stage-to-screen adaptation doesn't feel rooted to the boards like so many others have been.
9. Langella inhabits the pouchy skin of the man he's playing, until soon any meaningful distinction between actor and subject disappears.
10. The two-hour plus running time zooms by as the so-called "thinking man's Rocky" plays like an intellectual boxing match with Nixon effortlessly dodging Frost's hesitant jabs and the young challenger looking like he won't last the distance.
What is the consensus?
****
Answer:
Frost/Nixon is weighty and eloquent; a cross between a boxing match and a ballet with Oscar worthy performances.