Silver Screen in a Red Envelope: A Diary of Time Wasted

 This colorful and amusing adaptation of a colorful and amusing book by Thackeray actually felt like a well-balanced interpretation. Although the beginning of the story leaned very much in favor of our young heroine from the cover, some of her more questionable decisions emerged by the end. Of course, in the hands of a Hollywood storyteller, a snarky satire emerged as a warm and nuanced piece of dramatic literature. It is to be expected. We like our medicine with lots of sugar. All-in-all, it's much better than I thought it would be.

 Everyone saw this movie when it came out, yes? I'm certain of it. This film needs no critique. Both Phoenix and Witherspoon undoubtedly channel their characters straight from the fifties and sixties. I'm not a Johnny Cash fan. I'd never heard of June Carter until I saw this movie. (I'd never heard of Johnny Cash either, but it's not the sort of thing you start a paragraph with.) I'd been raised on The Kingston Trio and much more mellow stuff. An album cut in a maximum-security prison isn't the sort of thing we'd mix with our Andrew Lloyd Weber. I liked it anyway. I like the music, and the story. I don't enjoy watching imminent train wrecks, but it's nice to know that the aftermath cleaned up nicely, at least on film. The broken homes and drug abuse stupidity made me cringe, but I pitied the characters, and developed an affection for them. I cared - which means that something in the film was working well.