There is something contrived about this story in which people with major problems find a resolution.
Henry Poole Is Here (2008)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:85
Fresh:32
Rotten:53
Average Rating:5/10
Consensus: Full of Hallmark-truisms and pop songs presented with strained significance, this comic foible intends less to convert than to preach to the choir.
Runtime: 1 hr 40 mins
Genre: Comedies
US Box Office: $1,749,146
Synopsis: For a man who seems to be living a perfect life--comfortable, engaged, full of opportunity--the discovery in a routine doctor's checkup that all is not well prompts Henry Poole to flee. He finds... For a man who seems to be living a perfect life--comfortable, engaged, full of opportunity--the discovery in a routine doctor's checkup that all is not well prompts Henry Poole to flee. He finds himself alone in a new house and a new place, somewhere where perhaps he can try to escape the fate that he has been dealt. It's a house in a working-class suburb with neighbors who welcome him, or at least try to; he finds them rather unattractive, frankly, but fine for his purposes. But life won't let him alone. His neighbors' intrusions, the discovery of a "miracle" on a backyard wall, and the attentions of a little girl with a tape recorder disrupt whatever hopes he had for hiding out. Director Mark Pellington revisits Sundance (Going All the Way played at the 1997 Festival) with a very personal work about devastation and the need to find yourself. Inspired by Pellington's own loss, Henry Poole Is Here is a work that is soul searching in the best sense of the word. Poignant, yet acerbic and funny, it tells us about faith, the vagaries of life and death, and personal salvation. Powered by a resonant performance from the remarkable Luke Wilson, Henry Poole Is Here is full of small moments and meanings that make it a memorable film. -- © Sundance Film Festival [More]
Starring: Luke Wilson, George Lopez, Cheryl Hines, Radha Mitchell
Starring: Luke Wilson, George Lopez, Cheryl Hines, Radha Mitchell, Adriana Barraza
Director: Mark Pellington
Director: Mark Pellington
Screenwriter: Albert Torres
Studio: Overture Films
Reviews for Henry Poole Is Here
A snarky film filled with messages about faith? You better believe it.
... examines ... in a sometimes subtle and sidelong poetic way, is examine the ways people recover and heal.
The Lord may work in mysterious ways, but the filmmakers behind sensitive, life-affirming indie dramas about brooding young men stumbling towards redemption are an awfully predictable lot.
Sincere, relentlessly somber parable about a severely depressed man whose self-imposed suburban exile is upended by a familiarly-shaped stain on his wall.
Divine intervention notwithstanding, the box office here would ordinarily be meek, but in trying times movies about "something to believe in" tend do better than the ordinary bleak-and-hopeless fare that typically drives domestic box office.
A grossly obvious take on the draining push and pull of faith, the picture is warm to the touch, just not digestible or, ultimately, meaningful.
I felt let down by Henry Poole Is Here, which seriously examines questions of religious faith until it skips away at last from being pinned down.
A spiritual movie with the power to emotionally touch believers, agnostics and atheists -- in that descending order, I suspect. It doesn't say that religious beliefs are real. It simply says that belief is real. And it's a warm-hearted love story.
The combination of placid technique and Wilson's amiable, offhanded approach to a sketchily drawn character leads to a dissolution of dramatic interest around the midpoint.
A film that Christians will embrace, if only from sheer gratitude; here, at last, is a depiction of Christian faith as something other than the domain of cranks and loonies.
"Henry Poole is Here" is not a movie, but rather a sketch for a screenplay that was never written. If ever there was a cinematic impetus to give up all hope for humanity and free expression, it is this patronizing, condescending, and vacuous waste of cell
The movie is certainly flawed, but if you're able to suspend disbelief for the spiritual premise and can appreciate quiet little character-driven films where not much happens, you can do worse than this innocent and often lovely film.
Sober discussions give way to a clumsily handled finale that doesn't stand a prayer of satisfying most discerning viewers.
Latest News for Henry Poole Is Here
April 27, 2008:
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