BelSports
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Jakoba
True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.
Kinley
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
SnoopyStyle
It's WWII in a small working class Canadian town. Jeannie Dougall (Carol Kane) is a good girl living at home with her parents (Donald Pleasence, Doris Petrie). Her brother Jimmie comes home on furlough with military buddy Billy (Doug McGrath). After a night of drinking, Jeannie's friend rejects Billy who ends up raping her instead. Jeannie gets pregnant. Her father refuses to believe a soldier would act dishonorably. He forces her to marry his elderly drunken war buddy Sandy to maintain his honor.This is a small Canadian indie. It's pretty good. The accent is a little tough. The production is definitely older. It's grimy and old working class. The acting from Pleasence and Petrie is terrific. Carol Kane is sadly naive and in need of a big hug. It does need more in terms of intensity. I wonder if the movie needs a scene where Jeannie begs Billy to accept his part in the pregnancy. This movie needs something to elevate the drama.
moonspinner55
Writer-director William Fruet, adapting his play about a 16-year-old Irish wallflower in a Canadian town during World War II who is raped in her own living room by the soldier pal of her visiting brother, has a very limited vocabulary and an even narrower imagination. The wartime period décor is drably evoked, while the characters are of a frustratingly limited intelligence. Fruet has his cast emote and emote until the actors are shiny-faced with sweat. Worst of the offenders is Paul Bradley as the Dougall family's son celebrating being home on leave (Bradley, acting drunk with his mouth hanging open, looks almost as old as Donald Pleasence playing his father). As the wallflower's would-be loose, self-centered girlfriend, screechy Bonnie Carol Case is nearly as bad (and no explanation has been provided as to how these polar-opposites ever became friends, or why Case is so eager to meet soldiers but barely notices the two army men in her own friend's dining room). In the lead, young Carol Kane has been directed by Fruet to stay doe-eyed and vulnerable--with a humiliated look on her face. Still three years away from her breakthrough role in "Hester Street", Kane exudes promise but can't do much to bring shading or subtlety to this overstated scenario. * from ****
sugar-bear
16 year old Jeannie's(Carol Kane in her screen debut)brother has just come back from the army. He brings a friend named Billy along because Billy has no where to go. After a drunken night out, Billy rapes Jeannie as she sleeps on the couch. Billy and Jeannie's brother, Jimmy leave in the next morning and Jeannie is left hurt, afraid and pregnant. Once her parents find out, they blame no one but Jeannie. Her Mother begs the Father not to send Jeannie away. They let her stay but force her to marry an old man so they won't have to deal with gossip. Jeannie marries the old man and you can only feel sorry for her as you see this isn't a life she has wanted but has been made for her. Carol Kane delivers an awesome performance yet again. She blows me away every single time I see her in a movie. A lot younger here, I believe she is about 19, I still can't believe how great she was with it being one of her first films and all. I felt so bad for her through out the whole movie. Once again, mad props to Kane who without her this film wouldn't be as great as it was.
michael.will
Young Carol Kane set the pattern for her screen persona as a kindly but dim bulb teen in this dark kitchen sink drama, set in small town Ontario during World War II. Her older brother home on leave brings with him a worthless army buddy, who forces himself upon her after a night of drunken carousing. Left pregnant she faces the wrath of her imbecilic father (Donald Pleasence, an astonishing performance), who cooks up a monstrous scheme to "save the family honor" which culminates in one of the most grotesque finales ever put to film. Bleak and utterly harrowing, this is the scratchy flip side to all those cloying "nostalgia" flicks of its era and a fierce condemnation of the patriarchal social system out of control. For all its seriousness of purpose, though, it's also very funny, rude Canadian humor permeating even its worst situations as the appalling characters show all their warts with jolly gusto. Though unflinchingly realistic (period detail and speech patterns free of anachronisms) it's structured like a horror film (later director Fruet's specialty, unsurprisingly) and the final moment plays like the punch line of an especially tasteless joke. Not for all tastes, but recommended to those who caught the mordant hilarity of the equally poignant but merciless WELCOME TO THE DOLL'S HOUSE.
