so on the one hand, you ve got the court case, then you have the flashbacks to her life, her childhood abusive father, abandoned by her mother relationship with two boys, both of whom let her down. two young men, i should say. the book was a huge hit. the film s credentials are impeccable. and yet, and i hate to say this, it all felt very lukewarm. now, i haven t read the book, so i don t know how somebody who had read the book would feel about it. i know that whenever a book is this popular, it s always very difficult doing an adaptation. yes. there were moments in this in which i could almost hear the book behind it, thinking, ok, i can sort of see what the text would have been. the performances are good. i mean, it s a very good cast, it s very well done. the production design is really beautiful. but it all feels very safe. it deals with some dark subject matter, but it feels like a very polite treatment of that subject matter. and i kept thinking, somewhere in here t
good to have you on, really high. thank you both, always good to have you on, aubrey - really high. thank you both, always good to have you on, aubrey and i good to have you on, aubrey and jerry. thank you for watching. the film review is next. goodbye. hello and a very warm welcome to the film review on bbc news. and taking us through this week s releases is, as you see, mark kermode. hi, mark. hi. what have you been watching? well, as always, a very mixed bag. we have where the crawdads sing, which is an adaptation of a very popular novel. we have she will, which is the feature debut from charlotte colbert. and kurt vonnegut: unstuck in time, a documentary about the american writer. good old mixture there, yes. yes. so, where the crawdads sing, which is an adaptation of the deep south novel which became a publishing sensation millions and millions of copies sold. this is adapted by lucy alibar, who is best known for beasts of the southern wild. one of the producers is r
and you recently donated a large amount of money, £17,000, to a mother with a disabled child who had gone online and just said, i can t manage. i m not going to be able to keep the lights on. why did you do that? how did you hear about it? something popped up on the bbc scotland news page about this woman, carolynne hunter s story, and her saying that she would have to put her child, who has severe cerebral palsy and very, very extreme needs and is nonverbal, that she was going to have to put her child into care because she could not afford her electricity bills. and it absolutely destroyed me. ijust thought, on what planet is anyone going to let that happen? this is completely, completely wrong. we were able to track her down and say that i had wanted to make a donation and it was because of that that they then set up a gofundme page and bang, i was able to do it right away. and itjust felt. it was just wrong to me that this
it deals with some dark subject matter, but it feels like a very polite treatment of that subject matter. and i kept thinking, somewhere in here there is an earthier, grittier version of this story, but it s kind of got a touch of the nick sparks about it. itjust felt oddly bland. that s not to say it s bad, and it may well be that if you have read the book, you get more out of it. but i did think, ok, it s kind of, like i said, despite that swampy setting, it had a very lukewarm feeling and i didn t get emotionally involved in the way that i had expected to, so. because reese witherspoon options some interesting things, doesn t she? yeah. and she loves stories that put women at the heart of it, and that attracted me to it. but i haven t read the book either. well, it s the ethos of her production company is, you know, stories, women are right at the heart of the production and the stories themselves. i mean, you know, she s a great force in cinema. i confess, it s one of those times w