Review of Where the Heart Is

Introduction

Based on the book by Billie Letts, Where The Heart Is tells the story of 17 year old unmarried Novalee Nation. She`s pregnant, barefoot after being abandoned in Wal-Mart by her boyfriend, and she`s superstitious about the number 5...

On her own she has to fend her herself and keep her life together after giving birth in the supermarket. She meets new people who all help her along the way. From a young and naive teenager to an independent single mother, Novalee Nation then forges strong relationships with these new friends and finds a career for herself too.

Video

The 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer looks very clean and crisp throughout with hardly a blemish in sight. Colours are well balanced and detail remains high. It looks very good. Mind you, there`s nothing else on this disc to take up space so perhaps it was encoded with a decent bitrate!

Audio

Where The Heart Is comes with a DD5.1 soundtrack. Since this is essentially a dialogue driven movie, the dialogue works very well coming from the centre speaker. The other speakers come into use too with music and other ambient sound effects such as the hurricane. While not a system tester, the soundtrack sounds balanced without any distortion.

Features

Static menus with a little ditty in the background lead to chapter selection, trailer and music video. The trailer is the usual long trailer that gives away too many things, while the music video for "Where the Heart Is" is performed by The Warren Brothers. That`s your lot. No production notes, no featurette, nothing to give any added value to this film. I think this is poor. Heaven forbid that Fox spend any money on this low budget film.

There are no subtitles either.

Conclusion

Would or could you live in a Wal-Mart store without being noticed for a period of time? This is exactly what Novalee Nation manages to do, but only because of her less than ideal circumstances. Being pregnant, abandoned and a naive 17 year old not sure where to go or what to do, who to talk to...it seems a little far fetched but this is fiction afterall.

The script is written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, responsible for such charming films as City Slickers, Parenthood and A League Of Their Own, but this isn`t in the same vain as those movies. It`s a charming film all right, thanks largely to Natalie Portman and James Frain. We watch the story unfold from Novalee being the expectant mother to settling into her career and sorting out some romance in her private life too. We even get to see what happens to her ex-boyfriend as time passes and this adds an interesting element to the story. There`s quite a bit of time covered here, but it`s done well enough and remains easy to follow. The tradeoff for this however is that the story never really delves below the surface into specific issues.

Though a little light on the story, I did enjoy watching this DVD. Without Natalie Portman however, the film would be a little different and I`m not so sure if I would bother watching it. Here she turns in a fine performance and waltzs seemlessly across the movie with her usual endearing charm. It`s good to see her act again after the disappointment of Star Wars. The rest of the cast, Stockard Channing, Ashley Judd, James Frain (quite a good American accent) and a brief appearance from Sally Field, turn in good performances also and make this film very watchable.

With some interesting characters, an interesting story and good pacing in its 115 minute runtime, this is a surprise of a film. I think it would definitely get hidden amongst all the other DVD offerings out there if it weren`t for DVD reviews. It`s a shame there aren`t any extras to speak of which might make this a definite buy, as it is, it`s worth renting or buying on the cheap. It`s not the usual sentimentalist chick-flick dross, it`s better than average. So if you`re looking for a feelgood movie you can`t do worse than see this.