mdavisinspirations
They just do not make movies like this anymore. It brings out all the emotions and a lot of life lessons. Sidney Portier is great as usual, and SLP really puts on her acting chops. Dianne Weist has always been a favorite and does not disappoint.
I recommend this movie to everyone and any age.
johnston-11
I totally enjoyed this movie. The story line was interesting and the acting was good. Poitier and Parker did an excellent job. The supporting actors were good too. I thought it was very good for a TV movie. The flashbacks were great filling in the background information, with smooth transitions and was easy to follow. It had variety with some humor and a lot of drama. The ending was satisfactory which is a big thing to me. You leave the movie feeling good. I loved it and bought my own copy. Highly recommended. Appropriate for children - another big plus for me. There was no offensive language, sex or violence. My teenage children watch it with me and like it too.
Ellen Roemer
Noah is a carpenter who lives on 35 acres that a big real estate giant wants to build one of their cheesy malls on. This man effects people in one of two ways, either their lives are changed forever or they just don't get it. You feel sorry for the ones that don't get it but not very sorry. Sidney Poitier is as hauntingly charismatic in this film as he was in "Lilies of the field" the first time I saw him in films. This is a good film to relax and enjoy and ponder how beautiful the earth is and how wise Noah is.
The_Movie_Cat
WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS
It almost makes me cry to see Sidney Poitier shunted into a land of mediocre TV movies. His intensity, concentration and facial array are still finely honed, so what's a first-rate actor doing in dirge like this?I love Sidney – love him, I tell you – and watching him work the cable circuit in what is practically a watered-down version of A Raisin in the Sun is disheartening indeed.Poitier plays Noah Dearborn, a 91-year-old "carpenter God". No disrespect to carpenters, but pumping up such a glamourless job with aggrandising lines like "Nothing seems to interest him but his work. In my mind that makes him a noble man" just doesn't work. What next – the Lord of accountancy? The saviour of tax inspectors? Sidney Poitier as Tony Smith, Dental Research Technician? It's revealed that since the death of his family Noah has lived his life without touching another human being, and so spends his days playing with his tools. (Leave it!) Dearborn isn't perhaps Sidney's greatest characterisation as he sports a not totally convincing Southern accent. But don't hold it against him – Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins are ropy when it comes to assuming a dialect, and even Robert De Niro fails to engage as anything other than an Italian American.Backing up Sidney are some cheesy TV movie actors delivering hackneyed TV movie lines. Gregg Champion is a TV movie director, whose groundbreaking technique seems to involve placing the camera down and then rushing off for a cup of tea while the actors say their lines in front of it. Even Poitier can't set alight clanky lines like "All you people come out here dressed as lambs, but you smell like foxes." Or how about "You folks are long-winded when a small breeze will do just fine" and "Some say when God comes down to vacation on Earth, he stays at Noah's."The film's narrative is punctuated by four flashback sequences, each sentimental one of them delivering a trite platitude like "When a man loves his work... truly loves it... sickness and death will get tired of chasing you." But while the 'sell your land' plot is evocative of Raisin, there's no racial or social dynamic, merely a group of rich city businessmen trying to buy the land of the poor country worker. The recreation of a close-knit Southern community is also somewhat stereotyped and rose-tinted, with not a worried-looking rooster in sight.Predictably, a psychiatrist (Mary-Louise Parker, better than most) starts to see things Noah's way. The title is also apt, because 'simple' perfectly describes the A to B plotting which could comfortably fit on the back of a matchbox. Breaking down the character name is also telling, not least the unsubtle Biblical reference of his first name.The tacky conclusion sees Noah get Parker out of a car crash with some of his carpentry tools. Presumably if the crash had killed her, he'd have resuscitated with a hammer and chisel. For there's nothing that Noah can't do, a folk hero, Santa Claus and minor deity all wrapped into one.That said, the film is quite sweet, albeit in an overstated, sickly way. But after In The Heat of the Night, The Defiant Ones and Lilies of the Field - to name just three – then why did it have to come to this? Make the most of him, Hollywood... he won't be around forever.
