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90With its open, spontaneous elasticity, White Oleander is that rare Hollywood film -- an attempt to understand, without judgment, a world on its own terms.
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83The result is an experience of painful awakenings, gorgeous textures, committed acting and silences filled with moment -- a lovely balancing act
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83Pfeiffer devours every one of her scenes with a ferocious performance.
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80No matter how restrained the direction or unsentimental the performances -- and White Oleander scores points for both -- there is no escaping the semi-trashy but oh-so-life-affirming ring of the plot.
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80The accumulation of sharp candid flashes adds up to a disturbing vision of Los Angeles as a teeming jungle of dysfunction.
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80Director Peter Kosminsky elicits such genuine performances from his talented cast that the film rarely strikes a false note.
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75What the movie cannot take from the book is its dreamily descriptive prose and interior monologue. Perhaps because of that, the movie changes the focus from Ingrid, the more fascinating creature, to Astrid, whose clay is more malleable for the big screen.
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75Some of the year's most arresting female performances justify White Oleander, a highly episodic melodrama.
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75Stronger on character than on story, the film version of Janet Fitch's best-seller is shaped and propelled by the astonishing performance of Alison Lohman.
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75Overall, you're left wondering why every big novel needs to be a movie. White Oleander would work better as a four-part miniseries -- or at least as a less conventional screenplay.
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70All the household changes give the film an episodic quality that leads to a certain start-and-stop dramatic momentum. But fresh face Lohman holds the film together emotionally, more than matching up to the bigger name stars that turn up in supporting roles.
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70Tends to settle for easy, homiletic insights. But it also has a collection of first-rate performances by some marvellous actresses.
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70Never rising above routine episodic storytelling, White Oleander nonetheless retains something of its source novel's ravaged emotional surface and cool, observant manner.
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70Considering the star power -- and talent -- of the cast around her, it would have been impressive if Alison Lohman had simply held her own as Astrid, the young heroine of White Oleander. Instead, she owns the movie.
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70A lot of White Oleander is heavy sledding of the waa-waa, touchy-feely kind. But just as much of it has the sting of something so real it hurts.
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67Impressively unflappable and natural, 23-year-old Lohman -- whose best known credit is perhaps a role on Fox's short-lived ''Pasadena'' -- holds the whole plot together skillfully.
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63The story is determined to be colorful and melodramatic, like a soap opera where the characters suffer in ways that look intriguing.
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63The whole film, in fact, seems too fast for its own good. It plays like a synopsis, jumping from scene to scene, grief to grief, and it doesn't let us relax into the various worlds it's creating.
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63Pfeiffer is the antithesis of the girl next door: You just have to look at her to know that she was born to be bad.
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63It's not edgy or groundbreaking, but it tells the story it sets out to tell. For what it is, Kosminsky's picture is polished and effective. If only the movie had taken more risks or possessed a keener edge...
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60While the film may drop a few of the novel's more disturbing moments, it still travels some emotionally rocky territory, and each of those actresses -- particularly Alison Lohman, who carries most of the movie on her young shoulders -- turns in a first-rate performance.
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60Maybe it's only half of what it could be, but at least it's a healthy half. And in this era of mainstream cookie-cutter moviemaking, that's a feat in itself.
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60White Oleander goes through the paces with a little more dignity than usual, which is a mark of either director Peter Kosminsky's refusal to overplay the melodrama, or his inability to wring it for all it's worth.
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Ultimately sacrifices nuance to tidy epiphanies about personal growth.
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60This is a film without a center, a film whose young protagonist should have more texture, more of a compelling voice than she does. Through no real fault of the acting, young Astrid does not compel our attention the way she must if White Oleander is to succeed completely on the screen.
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60Lohman's pensive loveliness carries the film.
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50What diminishes the film's impact is Mary Agnes Donoghue's schematic screenplay, which follows Astrid from home to home as unswervingly as a faithful pet.
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Lacks emotional power.
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50Wilts under a weak, formulaic story.
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50The people who've made White Oleander appear to have spent a lot of time worrying about the audience. They should have told the story and let us take care of ourselves.
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50The overwrought White Oleander may be middling drama, but if it bears any resemblance to truth (which I doubt), it's a brutal indictment of the L.A. County Department of Social Services.
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50The estrogen overload damn near did me in.
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50Adapted from the million-selling novel by Janet Fitch. Not adapted enough, I would say. [14 & 21 October 2002, p. 226]
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40The metaphoric title about the danger in beautiful things sounds like something from Byron or Keats, but this compressed film adaptation of an Oprah-endorsed bestseller plays like the Dickens.
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40The worst mistake is the screenplay, which not only cuts everything into superficial pieces but fails to make authentic moments of anything. In the end, White Oleander isn't an adaptation of a novel. It's a flashy, star-splashed reduction.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 12
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Mixed: 2 out of 12
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Negative: 1 out of 12
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NicoleM.10I thought the book and movie was the best that I have ever seen in a long time.