Here on Earth Review
by Susan Granger (Ssg722 AT aol DOT com)April 2nd, 2000
http://www.speakers-podium.com/susangranger.
Susan Granger's review of "HERE ON EARTH" (20th Century-Fox)
Teenybopper alert: this picture is made just for you. Forget about the rest of us. We've seen it before in "Love Story," but you haven't so, here goes. Leelee Sobieski is a feisty waitress from the wrong side of the tracks. Josh Hartnett is her townie boy-friend, and Chris Klein is a cocky, Princeton-bound, Boston-bred prep-school kid who takes his shiny new Mercedes out for a drive in rural Massachusetts. A dangerous car race brings their lives together when it results in the destruction of a loc al diner called Mabel's Table, owned by Sobieski's mom (Annette O'Toole). In fitting punishment, Klein and Hartnett are forced to rebuild the family-run restaurant as community service during the summer. That involves snobby Klein boarding with Hartnett's working-class family and falling for Sobieski. But that's a minor trauma compared with the tragedy that happens later - when Sobieski discovers that her old track injury to her knee has developed into cancer. After "Eyes Wide Shut," TV's "Joan of Arc," and "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries," Leelee Sobieski basks in the teenage mainstream, while amiable Chris Klein goes sulky and serious after "American Pie" and "Election." They do their best with the material they're given. It's just too bad that Michael Seitzman's soap-opera script is so lame, Mark Piznarski's direction so slow-paced and prosaic, and Andrea Morricone's score so schmaltzy. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Here on Earth" is a pubescent, tear-jerking 4. The title comes from poet Ro bert Frost's musings about the beautiful Berkshire woods where the lovers discover "a little bit of heaven, here on earth."
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