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Hearts in Atlantis (2001)
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Reviews Counted:29
Fresh:13
Rotten:16
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: Hearts in Atlantis is well-acted and beautiful to look at, but the movie is nothing more than a mood piece.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for violence and thematic elements
Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Sep 28, 2001 Wide
Box Office: $23,604,382
Synopsis: "Sometimes when you're young, you have moments of such happiness, you think you're living in someplace magical, like Atlantis must have been; then we grow up and our hearts break into... "Sometimes when you're young, you have moments of such happiness, you think you're living in someplace magical, like Atlantis must have been; then we grow up and our hearts break into two." --Ted Brautigan For middle-aged photographer Bobby Garfield (DAVID MORSE), the past comes kicking the door down one day when the death of a childhood friend beckons him back to the town of his upbringing, and the memory of his 11th summer in 1960. It's a summer of friendship shared with his closest pals, Carol (MIKA BOOREM) and Sully (WILL ROTHHAAR), and marked by the arrival of a new lodger, Ted Brautigan (ANTHONY HOPKINS) in the upstairs apartment of the boarding house where Bobby lives with his self-obsessed mother, Liz (HOPE DAVIS). Bobby's memory of his long-dead father is clouded by his mother's bitterness, but Ted fills the gap, offering him adult friendship and attention, and helping to open the boy's eyes to a bigger world. But Ted brings with him too a haunted past, and strange powers which both puzzle and alarm Bobby. When he offers Bobby a job, it's more than simply reading the paper to save the old man's failing eyes. Ted enlists the boy to help him avoid a powerful danger that's pursuing him. As the last summer of Bobby's childhood draws to a close, Ted gives him a new understanding of his father, and the possibilities of life and love, before events overtake them all. Ted's pursuers close in, forcing Bobby to find depths of courage and forgiveness he never imagined. And for the adult Bobby, revisiting his childhood home and the memories of a summer long gone, a chance encounter completes the circle of his journey back in time. -- © Warner Bros. [More]
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis, David Morse
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis, David Morse, Mika Boorem, Alan Tudyk, Tom Bower, Celia Weston, Adam LeFevre, Deirdre O'Connell, Timothy Reifsnyder, Will Rothhaar
Director: Scott Hicks
Director: Scott Hicks
Screenwriter: William Goldman
Producer: Kerry Heysen
Studio: Warner Bros.
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Reviews for Hearts in Atlantis
Hicks ... coats the film in a bogus idyllic mist that substitutes cheap sentiment for blunt truth.
The unblinking sympathy for kids struggling with evil and with the strange frequencies of prepubescent passion can, if your defenses are down, lay you out.
Hicks's film is magical, but its magic comes not from the inexplicable phenomena we most commonly associate with King, but from the charms of childhood.
Unabashedly sentimental, it's meant to touch our hearts in profound and important ways, but misses the mark by drawing too deeply from a pool of schmaltz.
The story's enchantment feels forced and coy, its mysteries tricked-up and flimsy.
A fussy piece of schmaltz that makes you long for Stand By Me, a vastly superior coming-of-age tale from King's pen.
A sweet coming-of-age story set in the summer of 1960, akin in mood to [King's] Stand by Me.
All that early promise goes for naught when the picture approaches the final act, whereupon the various mysteries yield solutions that prove to be silly or sentimental or both.
The performances are all first-rate, reinforcing the promise Hicks showed in the beautifully acted Shine.
The acting is so good, you almost want to forgive the fact that they're not saying anything, and the film has no real point.
Rarely does a movie make you feel so warm and so uneasy at the same time.
A nostalgic fiasco so shameless it makes movies like Simon Birch and Frequency seem as austere as the work of Robert Bresson.
Latest News for Hearts in Atlantis
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