Saving Grace B. Jones

I found this movie very disappointing. The most emotion it elicited was an occasional unhappy head shake at (character's) disregard and ignorance. The story based on an actual situation in the 50's having a brother's extraordinary compassion to get his sister out of an insane asylum, the inhumane treatment of mental illness/brain damage and heartbreaking events; this film should have been a real tearjerker. Not saying it was bad just remarkably ineffectual. I should have had tears streaming, sobbed even at one tragedy after another and instead my throat never closed or had even one slightly moistened eye moment. Nada (and I've choked up with Reach Out and Touch commercials.)

I didn't know what to expect when walking into this film, other than that Connie Stevens created it with many others including Tatum O'Neal as the lead actress and Michael Biehn as lead actor. I came out of the theater realizing I had just witnessed a great and legendary picture, with the second greatest performance I have ever had a chance to see. Connie Stevens was sitting directly behind me, as were two of the young actresses who helped bring real life into this film. "Grace" starts out very innocently. We learn that Michael Biehn's character is brother to a woman named Grace who has spent the last two decades confined in a mental hospital. And then we see Tatum O'Neal as Grace, and one can tell this is an extraordinary performance from the very first shot of her. After years of turmoil and bargaining, Grace is finally released back into society into Michael's home where he lives with his wife and daughter, and her friend Carrie played by Rylee Fansler. From the beginning though, this is all Rylee's experience in living with her friend and her family, and her character, Carrie, is based entirely on Connie Stevens; this film was a real part of her life. Grace was a part of her life, and as we learn, not in a truly positive way. As Grace struggles to adjust, the weather is looking grim, and a historical flood causes mass conflict for all. Can Grace cope, or will her actions lead her into the darkest of places? Tatum O'Neal, many blessings to you. She was perfect in her performance and thrilling throughout. The second half of this film is extremely darker than the first, and for that reason I urge everyone to see this film as it heads into theatres and watch the film in its entirety. I hope to see more from Connie Stevens and an Academy Award nomination for Tatum O'Neal, she deserves the best.

I am usually very forgiving of B-grade films. I don't mind a good old- fashioned syrupy love story now and then, or some half-baked horror tale about a woman in some remote location fighting to save her family's haunted B&B . . . but this film . . . wow, I really can't forgive this one. It is so grossly manipulative, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, from the acting to the writing to the rainstorms of Biblical proportions. I didn't know if I was watching a Hallmark film, some silly Nickelodeon episode, or a cheap horror flick. The children are as cloying as marshmallow peeps (did no one work with these young actors, or did they just stuff them with cupcakes and candy and set them in front of the camera?). The adults--actors, director, and screen writer--didn't fare much better. I just felt bashed in the head at every turn--too much too much too much. (Towards the end of the film Penelope Miller has one of the most atrocious rain-soaked speeches I have ever seen.)

I did enjoy and appreciate Tatum O'Neal's performance. While I understand some of the harsh criticism regarding her portrayal of a severely emotionally disturbed woman, I found it to be heart breakingly realistic in the main. Of course she would drift around, half awake, half alive, twitchy and flaky and completely insecure. I actually felt sorry for this character. While I don't know how much of the story is entirely based on real events, surely placing Grace in her brother's home with his happy camper family, across the street from her former husband and his bubbly preggers wife, then given the glamorous job of sewing the baby's quilt and creating a mile-high lemon meringue pie of a ballgown for a 10 year old attending a military ball (a horrible and unnecessary story line, on several counts). . . I mean, if this is what her life has become, who wouldn't break out the sharp objects?

Growing up in Kansas I have known real families who suffered tragedy in similar ways. It is a step back in time. Three of the four kids tended to over act but otherwise the acting is very good and the story haunted me long after. Give it a chance. I think some reviewers missed the point. Connie was simply sharing a story based on her childhood experience. Ironically sent away to keep her safe in rural Missouri after a traumatic witnessing of a horrible act in the big Apple. There is tragedy everywhere. It's slow paced but it makes it seem real and I don't understand the reviews that say they weren't touched by the story. It's really about a family's suffering which no one ever deserves but is part of life.

Lousy dubbing, but the script, the story based on real events, very moving, in the end it hurt my soul the pain of that father, brother, husband, how many losses ... Wonderful film by actress Connie Stevens who at 74, makes her debut in the direction with a semi-autobiographical film ... Touching, deep, touching, left me with that little pain in my heart at the end, little films touch me so deeply ... Deep ...