The Rising Place Reviews

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

This misty-eyed Southern nostalgia piece, in treading the line between sappy and sanguine, winds up mired in tear-drenched quicksand.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5

Looks awfully like one long tourist spot for a Mississippi that may never have existed outside of a scriptwriter's imagination.

| Original Score: 2/4

It is one more celluloid testimonial to the cruelties experienced by Southern blacks as distilled through a Caucasian perspective.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

The overall feel is not unlike watching a glorified episode of "7th Heaven."

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Yet another weepy Southern bore-athon.

Full Review

However sincere it may be, The Rising Place never quite justifies its own existence.

Full Review

[Creates] the worst kind of mythologizing, the kind that sacrifices real heroism and abject suffering for melodrama.

Full Review

Rice is too pedestrian a filmmaker to bring any edge or personality to The Rising Place that would set it apart from other Deep South stories.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Sticky sweet sentimentality, clumsy plotting and a rosily myopic view of life in the WWII-era Mississippi Delta undermine this adaptation.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

A not-so-Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood with a hefty helping of Re-Fried Green Tomatoes.

Rice never clearly defines his characters or gives us a reason to care about them.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

| Original Score: 2/5

Never rises above its own unleavened blandness.

Full Review | Original Score: C

Salutes an interracial friendship between two Southern women and the ways in which enthusiasm can be a life-saving gift in tough times.

Full Review

A solid cast, assured direction and complete lack of modern day irony.

Full Review | Original Score: A

Full Review