The Man in the Moon -- 1991 -- PG-13

So last night I finally got to sit down and watch another movie, and this time, it was off my wife's Netflix list. This was Reese Witherspoon's first film, and according to some trivia, she went out for a casting call in Nashville to be an extra and landed the lead. Not bad for your first outing.

The story follows a 14 year old girl who runs into a 17 year old boy who just moved in next door. The age difference creates a lot of great tension between the two as she is enfatutated and he considers her a kid. This tension is heightened, of course, when he meets her older sister who is preparing to leave for college.

The plot was fairly well constructed with only a couple of strange moves and hiccups. The narrative expects you to make a lot of assumptions as to what is going on and what went on. For example, the boy in question meets the older sister and leaves just as dad is getting home. Well, he has to rush back off and moments later, the boy comes back as the sister is waiting on the porch. Plotwise, this was weird, because you wonder why he came back so soon after leaving, but you can assume she called him, which explains why she would be waiting.

Also, it felt like some of the sequences were cut short. Dani and Court at the market, for example, was a great opportunity for character development between the two, but we never got it. There were times at the pond where they could have talked, and we moved on. Court and the older sister only had four scenes together before we hit another big event, and their scenes had very little in the way of length or development. We know she cared about her sister's feelings, but what led her to change that stand and go out with him?

Character is really the weakest point of the film, primarily because it expects the same kind of assumptions about the characters that the plot expects. There is very little onscreen development between any of the characters. The leads, Dani and Court, get the most screen time, but most of the film is devoted to moving the plot along as opposed to developing its myriad of characters. It's good that the focus on the leads was maintained,. but we needed a little of the other characters and their interactions as well as more development of the leads in who they really are.

This was a movie with a lot of great potential in it, and my wife just loved it. To completely enjoy it, you have to be willing to read between the lines and get into the emotional side of it. I think it could have been better with only a few more minutes spent on the relationships here and there, but even so, like I said, it's not bad.

My wife had gotten some real clunkers from Netflix lately, and I was very happy she got one that she enjoyed.