Review of Freedomland (2006) by Jaclyn C — 05 Jul 2008

This movie had a decent plot and the potential to be much better, it just wasn't executed very well.

It started off slowly and predictably; once Brenda began telling her story, I could basically guess at what would happen in the rest of the movie. The pace did end up picking up a bit later on and the end was slightly unexpected, but overall, I wasn't that impressed by this movie.

The religious bits and preachiness didn't really appeal to me, either.

However, I did think the acting was pretty great; Julianne Moore, especially, did an excellent job at playing a woman who was losing it. It's a shame, though, that the actors' abilities were mostly overshadowed by the mediocrity of the other elements of the movie.

Though I haven't read the novel, it actually seems like this is the type of story that doesn't translate well from a book format into a movie. The pacing was pretty slow and the movie was tediously long; though this may have been necessary for the audience to understand the story, it only ended up making the story boring. It probably worked out much better in the novel.