Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

francescof86 "When love is not enough" is an amazing TV film based upon the novel "The Lois Wilson story:when love is not enough" by William Borchet. The screen adaptation centers on Lois Wilson's(Winona Ryder)struggle with the alcohol dependence of her husband Bill Wilson(Barry Pepper)and the subsequent foundation of such institutions as Al-Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous that for the first time dealt publicly with this plague.The script displays efficiently and it offers plenty of dramatic moments played exceptionally by the two leading actors. Winona Ryder("The age of innocence";"Little women";"The crucible","Girl,interrupted"),in her first meaty role in years,is and proves again to be the serious dramatic actress we were used to;Barry Pepper is extraordinary in a challenging role. How such an incredible leads have been ignored by the Emmys and the Golden Globes, except a Screen Actors Guild award nomination for Miss Ryder and many Satellite award nominations, is a true mystery. Such a shame. My vote is 10/10.

dgg321982 Sure, the story of Mr and Mrs Wilson is a very true one, so true that we can hear around us now and then. Before watching it, I never know the alcoholism can be so devastating and make the victim so helpless. And the depression adds insult to the injury, making their lives even down to the bottom. I had to watch this part with great uneasiness. This lasted until the very end, where everything seemed to be OK again. What can I say, exactly such an up and down makes a warm story about devoting love and faith.I am impressed that Mr Wilson finally made it and, not only helped himself but also the others. But I am more impressed by his wife Lois, her devoting love and firm support to her husband, which, if I were in Mrs Wilson's shoes, would have divorced him at least three times over. Sure, this film is from her angle telling the story and understandably making her the closest entry point for the viewers. Nevertheless, her sweetness and forgiveness is never shadowed or shaded by this setting. One might wonder, who else can play Lois Wilson better than Ryder. I don't know how the real Lois looks like, but as long as the real story goes like the one in this film, the role will be tailored to Ryder. After all, I really can't think of another actress in Hollywood has a small share of Ryder's sweetness and shyness.

vchimpanzee At the beginning of this fact-based Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation about the couple who helped start Alcoholics Anonymous, Lois and Bill Wilson get married in 1918 before he goes off to serve in World War I.After the war, Bill returns home and works on Wall Street. Lois, whose father is a doctor, works as a nurse with the mentally ill.Bill realizes that it would be helpful for investors to know about the companies they invest in, so he starts analyzing the companies, something not done much in the past. This involves lots of travel, including a motorcycle trip with Lois that involves comic misadventures.The work is stressful but eventually rewarding. Bill copes with the stress by drinking. He and his friends often get together and drink. Never mind Prohibition. Everyone in this movie finds a way.Bill gets abusive when he drinks, but he keeps promising he will stop. And then he eventually starts again and the problems continue.Lois gets pregnant but can never carry a baby to term. Perhaps this is all for the best since it wouldn't be a good idea to bring up a child in a home where the father behaves the way Bill sometimes does. One of the couple's friends admits this when the couple tries to adopt.The Depression eventually puts an end to the prosperity the Wilsons and so many others have experienced. Bill finds this a reason to drink, but sooner or later he will have to stop one way or another.This movie does a good job of showing how hard it is to stop drinking and to keep from starting again, and shows how it is possible for people with a common problem to support each other.Winona Ryder and Barry Pepper both do a very good job. I expect Ryder to be nominated for some award.I enjoyed the music. During the 1920s, there is a lot of music which one could dance the Charleston to, but there are also other enjoyable styles of music from that era. One song included a fiddle and several other instruments. I wouldn't recommend this to young children because the subject matter is quite adult, but this is still a family movie in a sense and doesn't really include offensive content. So much of the movie is depressing and hard to watch, but there is plenty of positive content too.It's a worthy effort.

michaelgm After I watched this eagerly awaited, but ultimately disappointing film, one of my first thoughts was that this film needed its own version of Al-Anon. Lois Wilson, like many spouses of users, spent all of her energies dealing with the fall-out of living with an alcoholic; did the movie have to do the same thing? When one has less than two hours to tell a complex story about a fascinating woman, did we really need an hour and twenty or thirty minutes of the constant cycle of dankness, shame, recriminations, and broken promises? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure this harrowing cycle repeats itself in every user's home--it's just that when there was so little time to tell such a complicated story, I would have preferred less binges and more character development. I didn't get a good sense of what drew these two together in the first place. There were so few scenes other than those of "saintly wife props up troubled husband," that I just didn't get a sense of them as a married couple. I didn't feel Pepper and Ryder had that much chemistry together. Since much was made of the fact that the real Lois Wilson was 3 or 4 years older than Bill, it didn't help the situation to cast an actress with such a youthful persons with an actor who always looked appreciably older than her--and, yes, I know drink ages you, but he looked a lot older than her at the wedding. Hallmark seems to have lost its mojo.Poster formerly known as FilmNutgm