Review of The Man in the Moon (1991) by Melanie S — 21 Sep 2012

The only reason why this film was mildly enjoyable was because Robert Mulligan was able to capture the classic nostalgic coming-of-age feel. I'm sure if there was any other director attached to this same exact script it would have been a disaster.

Jenny Wingfield, the writer, seems like she knows where she wants to go with each scene, but doesn't quite know how to get the characters to start talking about things. This film opens up with Dani telling her older sister Maureen that she's so beautiful and perfect and she wants to be just like her some day.

It's really an awkward opening. No smooth entry. I'm sure on the page it works fine, but how do you not realize that when you have real people trying to start a conversation like this it's not going to come off so well? Luckily the entire film isn't this rough, but it definitely has other moments like this.

I've also never seen Tess Harper have such a forced performance before. Like I said, none of this is due to the directing. Mulligan's able to take these awkward moments and somehow make them feel classic.

Once things start moving and we see the relationship start to bloom between Dani and Court then things start to work. Overall, the film's enjoyable but not memorable. It doesn't take any surprising turns or do something you wouldn't expect.

That could be seen as a positive because like I said before it's just a classic coming-of-age tale. It gives you what you want while walking into a movie like this. The only thing is that the third act break doesn't really work too well when Court dies by reaching for his hat.

The build-up of the scene works well. We're worried he might hit Dani or his mother while daydreaming. But then he reaches for his hat and falls off and the tractor kill him. There was no previous work to make us believe he was careless or a foreshadow of the possibility of something happening to him.

It really comes out of nowhere. I'm sure Wingfield thought this would be a beautiful act break that would make people start talking, but to me it just felt cheap. I do love the last conversation between the sisters when they say they wish they could still believe you could talk to the man in the moon and he would work out the puzzle for you, but life's not that easy.

I also don't quite understand why Dani's so mad at Maureen. It's not like she really knew a full on relationship was going on between Maureen and Court. Like I said, not everything works, but Mulligan's directing makes it enjoyable enough to watch.