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Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, The

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 28 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 8 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
Jane Anderson
Terry Ryan (book)
Directed by: Jane Anderson
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 30, 2005
DVD: March 14, 2006
Running Time: 99 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 thematic elements, some disturbing images and language
Starring Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Trevor Morgan, Ellary Porterfield, and Simon Reynolds
Based on a true story, this film features Julianne Moore as a 1950's mother who defies the conventions of the day and finds a way to keep her family together by applying her remarkable resourcefulness and uncommon wit. (Go Fish Pictures)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Avoids obvious sentiment and predictable emotion and shows this woman somehow holding it together year after year, entering goofy contests that for her family mean life and death.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Anderson is the rare filmmaker who doesn't want to use the actress as an instrument or to exploit her independent-movie cachet. She has freed Moore to be what she hasn't been with many directors: credibly human.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Even more than in "Far From Heaven," Moore's housebound wife is a study in pent-up brilliance, with extraordinary devotion to her family.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
An engaging film bolstered by the stellar performance of Julianne Moore.
Read Full Review >Premiere Sara Brady
Overall, a modest but lovely achievement for Anderson, Moore, and Harrelson, and a family entertainment in the best senses of the words.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Peter Debruge
With its predictable confrontations and tacky fantasy sequences, you feel writer/director Jane Anderson steering the material toward schmaltzy movie-of-the-week territory at every turn.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The movie constantly verges on being a parody, but Moore's performance stays miraculously away from caricature.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
It has its own subversive power, as it elevates one family's struggle for working-class survival and valorizes a woman of simple faith and inner strength.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Even though Prize Winner ultimately asks us to swallow that golfball-size happy pill, Anderson and her not-so-secret weapon Moore are actually clawing their way toward something deeper and far more complex than a cheerful, embroidered slogan.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden
A spirited comic drama, toplined by Moore's lovely performance.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
Gently, affectionately and with wit, this lovely movie gives the 1950's its due, but not for a moment does it go overboard and make you want to go back there.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The actress' [Julianne Moore's] goodwill, alone, holds this schizophrenic story together - if just barely.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Anderson sees her subject as little more than a game-show contestant. One suspects the real Evelyn Ryan deserved far better.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Only an actor of Moore's calibre could begin to add a bit of credible flesh to these hallowed bones.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
It's tough to imagine a guy who won't squirm through this tale of 1950s housewife Evelyn Ryan.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
No one expects documentary realism in these memoir-to-movie transfers. It's reasonable, however, to expect more vibrant and expressive fictionalized treatment than this.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Moore's scenes with a miscast-but-game Harrelson offer a study in how spouses learn to handle even their partners' most destructive impulses, but in most other moments, Anderson fails to get beyond the surface of her characters' lives.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
This screen adaptation never quite jells, veering from family drama to stale 50s consumer kitsch, but it's anchored by strong performances from Julianne Moore.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Anderson's adaptation is heavy on production numbers in which jingles come to life and light on conveying any real feelings of Eisenhower-era darkness the prizewinner herself might have felt during her decades of marriage to an abusive, drunken man.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Tim Grierson
There's something terminally small about this big-screen melodrama, with its trite characterizations of fighting parents, empty pockets and kind hearts.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
But it's one thing to write a loving ode to your mother; another to direct an ode to an ode.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Melissa Levine
The film congeals from dripping sentimentality into emulsified schmaltz when it brings in the actual Ryan family, all 10 children (now in their fifties and sixties), for a final scene. The intentions are clearly honorable, and we certainly wish these people well, but this isn't a memorial service, it's a movie.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
This maudlin, fact-inspired and anti-feminist dramedy is no "Far From Heaven" or "The Hours."
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Marc K gave it a6:
I know it's so cliche to say, "it wasn't as good as the book," but I must say that here. The book was tremendous...this movie was merely a bit above average. Yes, Julianne Moore does an excellent job in the title role. But Woody Harrelson isn't so good as the drunk Dad/Husband. In the book, he was pretty much a peripheral character, but in movies, there is a demand for dramatic tension, which is why that role is much more prominent than in the book.
Chad Shiira gave it an8:
Since the filmmaker didn't want to throw dad(Woody Harrelson) under a bus, "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio doesn't quite add up, because the historical Kelly, we intuit, was a lot drunker than this film would care to admit. There's a disconnect between the family's attitude towards Kelly and his actual on-screen actions. Mr. Kelly drinks, but he's not a roaring drunk like Charles Bukowski. What man alive wouldn't take to the bottle if his disposition was being married with ten kids? Things get a little overblown when Tuff (Ellary Porterfield) jumps on her father at the flashpoint of a strapped-for-cash-inspired family crisis. Her actions suggest a history of spousal abuse, which is, at best, inferred. Nonetheless, "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio" is a good film that flirts with greatness when Tuff emerges from the obscurity of her voluminous siblings and engages in mother-daughter heart-to-hearts with Evelyn(Julianne Moore) on a road trip across the state line. Like "Almost Famous", the film starts off as a personal story, and then tells the larger story of an impasse in American history. In the Crowe film, Lester Bangs saw how rock and roll was on the brink of codification but mentored young William Miller to be impervious to its evils. In this film, Evelyn foresees "the death of literacy"(when writing contests are replaced by instant riches that require no talent, in which she accurately diagnoses as a symptom), but inspires three of her daughters to be writers anyway. Moore, once again("Far From Heaven", of course, being the left bookend), proves to be a poetess of the pre-bra burning woman. "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio" is a real sleeper. It committed "hara-kiri" by sticking with such an ungainly title.
Tina A. gave it a10:
Julianne Moore is brilliant, and this movie is amazing.
Bob H. gave it an8:
Moore and Harrelson were cast well and gave believable preformances in this film. It took me back to the 50'/60's on a wonderfully crafted nostalgic trip, with emotional highs and lows coming in rapid fashion.
Mark B. gave it a10:
If homemaker/perpetual contest winner Evelyn Ryan were around today, no doubt she'd be giving Ken Jennings a serious run for his money and Vanna White a serious case of sore wrists. However, since Evelyn lived and raised her 10 kids in the 1950s, her options were far more limited...which was unfortunate for her but very fortunate for us because we get to see the luminous Julianne Moore add Evelyn to the trademark gallery of Eisenhower-era desperate housewives that she opened up with Far From Heaven and The Hours. It's interesting and ironic that Evelyn is the exact opposite of the character Moore played in The Hours, incidentally; in the latter, her character ditched a perfectly nice husband who worshipped the ground she walked on (and permanently damaged the sweet, sensitive son she deserted); here, due to Evelyn's good Catholic upbringing and sense of parental responsibility, the idea of divorcing her loutish, obnoxious, resentful, always-in-the-way "better half" Kelly (Woody Harrelson) is never an option. (Apparently, due to said Catholicism, neither was birth control!) As a result, even though Evelyn was almost always able to support her family with the money, prizes and merchandise she endlessly picked up in newspaper, magazine and TV contests, she was more a survivor than a winner; Kelly perpetually drank up his paycheck while circumstances made it almost as impossible for Evelyn to leave town for a day or two off as Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey found it difficult to leave Bedford Falls in It's A Wonderful Life. But while Jane Anderson's irresistable, tremendously entertaining and moving account of Evelyn's life, times and troubles (based on a loving memoir by Evelyn's daughter Terry) rightfully depicts this almost unbelievably patient, level-headed woman as at least as much a heroine as Charlize Theron's mining company whistle-blower in North Country, one of the many beauties of this film is that neither Anderson nor Harrelson ever, ever demonize Kelly (even at his worst, which is often) or turn him into a villain. Essentially, he's the eleventh child in the household. With Oscar season officially underway, so are the big-screen biographies; with Edward R. Murrow's and Truman Capote's already here and Johnny Cash's just around the corner, this may be the most unassuming of the lot (as is its protagonist) but this absolutely one-of-a-kind film is my favorite. Anderson masterfully balances all kinds of conflicting moods and emotions; her delightful use of visual effects and offbeat narrative devices and her keen observation of 1950s lower-middle-class culture make this a joy to look at and listen to (and trust me, Gen Xers, at one time fish sticks and Jello WERE family dinnertime staples!), and her movie is alternately (and often simultaneously) wonderfully sweet, sad, satirical, sentimental...and truly inspirational in the very best sense of the word.
Mike S gave it a4:
Gives new meaning to "wildly uneven"; it's as schizoid as Harrelson's character. To the extent it works at all, it does so because of Moore.
