One True Thing Review
by Susan Granger (Ssg722 AT aol DOT com)September 25th, 1998
Susan Granger's review of "ONE TRUE THING" (Universal Pictures)
With all that has been written about the feminist movement, it took Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna Quindlen to write an engrossing story that dramatizes the complex difference between our mother's generation and us, a confrontation between a woman whose expectations never extended beyond her home and her children and her husband's career, who viewed her life as an adjunct to those things, and her daughter, whom she raised not only to work but to expect the world. Renee Zellweger ("Jerry Maguire") plays an ambitious Manhattan journalist who is forced to move back home to help her middle-aged parents - Meryl Streep and William Hurt - through a cancer crisis. Not only does she discover who her parents really are - their strengths, their weaknesses - but the gutsy, gritty emotional journey she undertakes as a care-giver is a complicated rite-of-passage to her own maturity. Superbly adapted for the screen by Karen Croner and directed by Carl Franklin ("Devil in a Blue Dress"), the performances are dazzling, except for Tom E. Scott's bland younger brother character which is grossly underwritten. Renee Zellweger, in particular, is captivating; she is irresistible as an actress, while Meryl Streep is luminous, perceptive, and courageous. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "One True Thing" is a wise, resolute 8. It's a remarkable, intimate film that reverberates with love for an unbroken generation of stay-at-home mothers who knew how to have fun within a limited arena and to love the life they made for the mselves.
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
