Memorable, crazy movie

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

I've never heard about this movie before, it was running on TV so I decided to watch it. I was really pleasantly surprised.This is such a sweet movie about a 17 year old girl called Novalee. Novalee is pregnant and moves with her self centered boyfriend to California where he can pursue his music career. On the way to California they stop at a Walmart so she can use the bathroom and buy some things, but things take a drastic change when she discovers that he has left her there. She feels terrible and has little other choice than to stay at the Walmart night and day. Every person in her life has let her down and in this place she finds some real good people she can call friends.A very touching movie.

Well, among all the young actresses in Hollywood, Natalie really leads the pack, ahead of Angelina, Jessica. She has really this fragility and kindness that I crave. That's why the first half-hour of this movie is absolutely extraordinary: a pregnant young mother on her own in a supermarket has the stuff of the best fairy tale: With only a few words and a lot of expressions, Natalie told us her feelings in that hard time for her. This beginning has the same zen spirit as the future "Terminal" and it gave me the opportunity of having a glimpse of one of my dreams: i have always dreamed about getting stuck in a big supermarket and experience it all alone at night! After the birth, the movie loses a bit of its charm: It turns into the life of simple people (rednecks?) in the country. The character of Natalie is mishandled because she doesn't act and have lines of a mother.By luck, she met an extraordinary courteous knight. I didn't know this actor, James Fain, but he is really good and a bit similar to Tobey Maguire. In addition, his care about the single family is exactly what i lived not so long ago. Even as a friend, he is really attached to the child and is deep in love with the mother. The difference is that my story ends in another way because i never had the guts to ask the question as Fain did.

What an odd film.My natural inclinations are very much against this sort of movie. There is a tweeness about much of it which makes me wince, and I cite particularly the names of some of the characters, and the way in which, despite all the odds, Natalie Portman's character - uneducated, penniless, heavily pregnant, and beset by the very worst of bad luck - happens to fall among nothing but sunny-natured philanthropists who offer helping hands all the livelong day, tra-la, isn't life wonderful?Yeah. As if.Yet something kept me watching. I became interested in what befell these characters, no matter how improbable it turned out to be (I noted that a kind of balance was struck between improbable and predictable, with some parts being both at the same time).Natalie Portman's accent in this was rather better than her English accent in V for Vendetta.Ashley Judd, in addition to getting nearly all the best lines (Stockard Channing's "fornication" prayers were in there too) managed to look both ordinary and hot enough to sizzle.James Frain doesn't have a look which lends itself to gentle romantic lead.None of the other principals left any great impression on me.Overall, I find I am left squarely between two stools. On one hand, I can't deny that I got a certain amount of enjoyment from watching this film, and I can't readily identify why. On the other, I really, really dislike films which take place in something approximating the real world (necessarily, in order to set up the disadvantages which befall the protagonists), and which then pull happy but totally unrealistic solutions out of a hat. Forrest Gump was one such movie: this is another.

Natalie Portman is excellent here, as well as Ashley Judd. The sweet, slow-flowing melodrama is nothing new under the sun, but again, thanks to very good and warm play of Ms. Portman we witness a very nice, well-done, thought-provoking work. The very place, Wal-Mart, the very little town, the people there are all very nice. The color scheme of the movie is another big plus. It is warm, bright, honey, sweet and very mellow. I liked Natalie's efforts to try and live somehow in the store, they way she counts the losses and damage done. Then follows that birth giving scene which is very emotional and thrilling. No, in general, I must admit, this is a very good work, with very good actors and very persuasive plot. Things like this do happen to us. People do have hard times, babies do get born in strange places. Watch it