Sinks it well below what it should achieve.
Comment
01/01/00
A Thousand Acres (1997)
24
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:46
Fresh:11
Rotten:35
Average Rating:4.4/10
Consensus: A Thousand Acres makes disappointingly sudsy stuff out of the source material, but benefits from solid performances by a strong cast.
Synopsis: A THOUSAND ACRES, director Jocelyn Moorhouse's screen adaptation of Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, finds skeins of KING LEAR-like conflict running through the bedrock of a midwestern... [More]
Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jason Robards
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Reviews for A Thousand Acres
Top CriticClick to read the article
10/18/08
Top CriticFrom the first frame, a silhouetted barn and windmill at dawn, the images feel prefab, and the all-purpose wistful tinkly piano and sighing strings pin them even more boringly down.
07/03/08
Cry, cry, cry. Hug, hug, hug. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
07/03/08
All the characters are sharply defined, with Lange and Pfeiffer in fine form, and Robards suitably sour as the grumpy old curmudgeon, but the plot has been watered down until it is little more than a Waltons-styled soap.
07/03/08
Top CriticProof that Hollywood no longer knows how to make that former staple, the women's picture.
07/03/08
Owing more to the spirit of Oprah than to the Bard, pic serves up an earnest but unconvincing stew of received notions about family dysfunction, awkwardly put across by a script wheezing with melodramatic contrivances.
07/03/08
Top CriticThe story is just an empty, manipulative compilation of tragedies and misunderstandings.
07/03/08
In many ways, it has less in common with Shakespeare's tragedy than with Stephen King's Iowa-set horror story, Children of the Corn.
07/03/08
Top CriticRobards' senile paterfamilias is, regrettably, a grave embarrassment.
02/09/06
Top CriticNo review available.
06/23/05
No review available.
06/22/05
No review available.
06/01/05
It's a pretty powerful analysis of an extended family (where lifelong friends in farming are integral to the well being of a community) shot apart by power and greed.
04/09/05
... just doesn’t work.
03/31/05
No review available.
01/21/05
Fans of Jane Smiley's enthralling Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres, will find the movie version disappointing.
07/01/04
Great novels are usually adapted into bad movies.
05/07/04
No review available.
02/08/04
You'll be shocked to discover how much of the novel's richness has been lost.
05/20/03
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