The filmmakers take a rather facile, anachronistic "Oprah"-esque approach toward the boys' feelings about their families and the Skipper's role as a "tough love"-minded surrogate father.
Kit out the Bates Motel with surveillance cameras, replace Anthony Perkins with the ineffectual Frank Whaley, and you'd have the location for this irritatingly cheapjack snuff-horror thriller, starring Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale as a depressed couple
well, however much I wanted to love it, the same old sorts of things happen, and the rigorous plausibility and consistency on which everything depends are thrown away.
There's one thing to be said about WWE Studios -- they're consistent. Every one of their movies designed to showcase their stable of popular wrestling stars has been a critical and commercial disaster.
Whereas Dances With Wolves was an epic cultural tract, That Thing You Do! is a piece of entertaining bubblegum which, like its director, making his feature directorial debut, is high on charm and style.
Though Hanks keeps the satirical and critical aspects of this look at show biz fairly light, there's a lot of conviction and savvy behind the steadiness of his gaze.
It's Sparks (television's Complete Savages) and Embry (Can't Hardly Wait) who carry this dual coming-of-age tale with engaging, if often raw, performances.
Tim McCanlies' charming feature directorial debut evokes the spirit of Capra's Depression comedies and Thornton Wilder's Our Town, without the nostalgia or sentimentality of those works.