Apr. 26, 2004 - 8:49 am

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Anywhere But Here (1999)

ok, i know i'm missing out on commenting on a lot of movies that Jill and i watched over the past few days, but almost all of them were things i had seen and commented on previously, so it's really not so shameful. i decided to go with this one since i hadn't written an entry on it before.

Anywhere But Here is about a mother and daughter who move from Wisconsin to Beverly Hills so that their lives will be more exciting and fruitful. actually Anne (Natalie Portman), the daughter, doesn't want to leave Wisconsin and hates her mother Adele (Susan Sarandon) for making her go. when they get there they realize how difficult it is to make it when you don't have a lot of money in the bank or even a well-paying job to support you. they also realize that they are very different people from one another and that although sometimes they hate to be together, they still desperately need one another.

i can't really think of too many films similar to this that i really enjoy. it takes some majorly good acting to pull me into a story like this one and the two leads do an excellent job of that for this film. i think two things could really have been improved in this film though, i would have liked the casting to have been a bit better for the supporting actors and also the shooting locations were fairly bad. the set designs were pretty terrible and never really drew you into the story.

i feel like this actually is one of those mediocre movies that i really enjoy for some random reason. my only good explanation is that it stars Natalie Portman. which reminds me that i'm still anxiously awaiting the release of Garden State at the theaters, but i don't think that will be happening until the summer. oh well, it's not like i don't have tons of other things to watch in the meantime.