Wow! Such a good movie.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I saw this film first on HBO and found it stunning, brilliant and heart wrenching. Most people, (I hope), never get to discover how much pain and suffering the human body can actually inflict on the human spirit. This film is largely about that. Therefore, I must caution this is not for the fainthearted.This is an important film. More so than PULP FICTION or THE AVENGERS or other like minded fantasies, because it shows in a very adult fashion what true evil and true heroism is really all about. The thematic level of this film could not be any higher. I credit it for giving you a small albeit hyper-real glimpse into what parents all over the world go through everyday of their lives as they raise their children through the vicissitudes of life in what can be a menacing world. Nick Nolte as Augusto Odone and Susan Sarandon as Michaela Odone have given birth and are raising a bright, precocious little boy they have named Lorenzo as played by half a dozen actors including Zack O'Malley. He has already learned three languages before his seventh birthday and his parents are wistfully looking down the road to his being a possible Harvard graduate when tragedy strikes. He begins exhibiting behavioral problems, memory lapses and tantrums. When he is taken to the doctors, he is diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a degenerative brain disease that takes the life of the affected party usually within two years. Lorenzo's parents, instead of quietly resigning themselves to accept Lorenzo's fate, do what almost any parent I know would do in such an instance. They pull out all the stops and make great sacrifices with regard to their own personal needs in order to extend and improve the quality of life for their child. This is so universally true about parents both for the observer and those with real life experience raising children it hardly needs comment here.This is a story about who the real heroes of the world are; they are the people who are trying preserve and enhance life at all costs regardless of their personal shortcomings or limitations of cultural or social training. The doctors tell the Odones that their son has at most two more years to live. Do they listen? Oh no, out of some panicked, primal urgency to lessen Lorenzo's suffering and protect the family unit no matter what, the Odones organize their lives around their son's need for round-the-clock care and Augusto Odone out of necessity becomes expert enough to invent a medicine that can ease the suffering of those with ALD and act as a preventative in many cases for those who are predisposed to suffer from the disease, but have not yet experienced the onset of its symptoms.There are many fascinating independent features of interest in this film, but central to is the acting of Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon as the beleaguered parents. Their reactions and responses to this appalling family crisis are so believable, I felt literally bonded to them in their struggle. Their uphill battle against the prevailing conventional wisdom of medical authorities simply to make a better life for their child would have made for good drama whether or not they ever found anything even remotely resembling a cure for ALD and its related maladies. The fact that Augusto Odone did in a large measure blaze the trail for exactly that is exceptionally commendable. The way director George Miller shows Augusto Odone figuring out a solution to arrest his son's pain is both visually and intellectually stimulating all the way up to that 'Eureka!' moment. When I was growing up, I was fortunate enough to see films about inventors like Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and teachers like Annie Sullivan. I must say here that the idea that people can improve conditions in life should not be the strict province of non-fiction. We could still use more of this concept in all the other genres of storytelling and the cinema. I found the end of LORENZO'S OIL exceptionally exhilarating as it postulated a breakthrough that would end suffering for many before it even began. This concept alone is worth more than a dinner and a movie.It is worth a donation to THE MYELIN PROJECT.

Lorenzo Odone is a regular kid who spent three years in east Africa. Back in the States, he starts having disturbances. It's a mystery that his parents (Nick Nolte, Susan Sarandon) have difficulty solving until he is diagnosed as suffering from ALD. It's a rare incurable degenerative brain disorder that wasn't even identified 10 years before. There are no treatments and he's not expected to survive past 2 years. Then his parents goes all out to research his disease.This is a perfectly constructed sick-kid-drama. It excels because of the great performances. There is some science but the exposition is simple. And it's impossible not to like the old English scientist with 6 months before retirement. It is heart warming and a tear jerking. It is a great triumph of doggedness and parental love movie.

Movie Critique by: Gaurav Paul Jonathan Liss Musaab HabibPlot Summary: The movie begins with a boy named Lorenzo Odone, who was normal until his 7th birthday. After that birthday, he began to have many problems, such as blackouts, memory lapses, and many other mental problems. After a while, he is diagnosed with a condition known as ALD, which is a brain disorder that could not be cured by modern medicine and is extremely rare. Basically the saturated fats, which would normally be destroyed by the body, build up in the brain depleting the myelin in the brain and therefore rapidly making simple functions of the body inoperable. Since many of the doctors in the area where he lived were not helpful to his condition, Lorenzo's parents began to learn more about the disease and how they can help Lorenzo. His parents looked at Lorenzo's disease the way they had prepared for journeys to foreign countries in the past; by studying their subject. In order to do so, both of his parents worked extremely hard reading up on biochemistry and other subject matter related to the disease. After much research and many long nights, his parents discover that what may be the secret to curing this disease is a purified olive oil. Unfortunately, they were literally only half right. Because of this mere 'half-success' in curing the disease his parent's studying continued until they found that a different oil, purified rapeseed oil, in combination with the purified oil would produce the chemicals needed to bring Lorenzo's saturated fat levels back to normal.THE CRITIQUE**Powerful Scenes *1st SceneScene begins with Augusto Odone speaking to Professor Nikolias - Augusto asks the professor if any progress was being made with any of the other kids who have ALD Then, the professor said that it is too early to tell whether any progress is being made with Lorenzo, and says that they have to wait six months After this, Augusto asks in an angry manner whether waiting six months will produce any results *2nd SceneScene begins with Augusto speaking to Michaela about what they first did when they went to the Comoros Augusto says that they got to learn the country, what resources it had, its laws, and many other things-Then, Augusto compares that with ALD and says that it also has many dimensions, so in order to learn more about it, one must know about many branches of science, such as chemistry, biology, and neurology-Then Michaela says that they don't have time to learn about all those branches of science Augusto then argues that the doctors don't know anything and that they need to take the treatment of Lorenzo into their hands Scene ends with Augusto saying that Lorenzo expects them to take care of him**Recommendations for how the movie could have been better, and what was good about the movieThe movie was supposed to be about poverty, but did not talk about the five dimensions of poverty, which are food, shelter, clothing, education, and health care - this only under the assumption that the movie would relate to the topic that we'd been given (poverty) directly The movie showed that they didn't have good health care or education, and not it was not only them they didn't have these things, as even the doctors in their area did not have a good education as they knew nothing about the disease that Lorenzo had. This, though was not directly stated as a main point of the movie and it was left to the viewer to deduce this. Also, the whole movie focused on how they could cure Lorenzo's disease, but didn't talk about poverty as much, or how they were trying to end poverty; again under the assumption that the movie would relate to poverty directly However, the movie, indirectly, showed that without the money that Lorenzo's parents had, Lorenzo would not have had the resources to cure - or at least help - the disease he was suffering from. For instance, someone in a much lower income family than Lorenzo's wouldn't have been able to afford a personal nurse or health-care in the hospital good enough to attend to the patients ALD needs.

An inspiring true-life account of a husband and wife who, out of desperation, discover a treatment for their son's disease that otherwise had been dismissed by the medical community as untreatable.This is Lifetime movie stuff, and at any number of moments the film threatens to topple over into the overly maudlin and treacly. But it mostly avoids those pitfalls thanks largely to Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon, who play the mom and dad and who make this film worth watching. Sarandon's role is a bit more stock, that of the suffering mother. But Nolte is ferocious as a man with an obsession, literally racing the clock to save his little boy.Will probably never be considered a great film, but is at least a pretty good one.Grade: B