"A Painted House" is a disappointment in many ways. Some of the criticisms found in these reviews correctly point to the fact that Luke, the young protagonist of the movie who is seemingly based on the author John Grisham, never seems to change much in the course of the movie, even though he has witnessed a murder, an attempted murder, a threatened murder, and the total destruction of his family's crops. Still, as played by Logan Lerman, he maintains the same spacey, innocent look throughout, hardly growing at all even though what he has witnessed might well have shaken him profoundly.
The movie also leaves us with a slew of loose ends, almost as if it was designed exclusively to fit into a TV time slot. So, we never know if Luke's uncle comes back from the Korean War, we never know if the police solve Hank's murder or even how Hank's family reacts to his disappearance, we never find out whether anything can save the farm that Luke's mother and father abandon, and we certainly never find out how Luke and his family make out in the North — a part of the country that this poor Southern family seems to hate.
But the worst aspect of this movie flows from the only really endearing part of the movie: the very touching relationship between the 10-year-old Luke and the late teenager Tally. It is charming to watch the development of that relationship: Tally seems to think that Luke is cute, while Luke develops a crush on this beautiful young woman – obviously the first romantic feeling that young Luke has ever had. It is doubtless very sad for him when Tally runs off to marry the hot-blooded Cowboy.
But that is the problem: Luke has witnessed Cowboy kill Hank, and Hank is Tally's brother. Why in the world would a 10-year-old kid not react much more intensely to his first young love running off with the man who murdered her brother? Would he not have tried to stop her? If he couldn't, would he not at least have been tortured by the thought of her going off with a murderer? Instead, Luke simply tells his grandfather what he has seen and then they decide, with almost no emotion, that it would be better not to tell anyone about the murder. End of story.
It is hard to think of a less realistic and less emotionally satisfying ending to the movie — perhaps a perfect ending to a bland, emotionless movie which takes two listless hours to go absolutely nowhere.
The movie also leaves us with a slew of loose ends, almost as if it was designed exclusively to fit into a TV time slot. So, we never know if Luke's uncle comes back from the Korean War, we never know if the police solve Hank's murder or even how Hank's family reacts to his disappearance, we never find out whether anything can save the farm that Luke's mother and father abandon, and we certainly never find out how Luke and his family make out in the North — a part of the country that this poor Southern family seems to hate.
But the worst aspect of this movie flows from the only really endearing part of the movie: the very touching relationship between the 10-year-old Luke and the late teenager Tally. It is charming to watch the development of that relationship: Tally seems to think that Luke is cute, while Luke develops a crush on this beautiful young woman – obviously the first romantic feeling that young Luke has ever had. It is doubtless very sad for him when Tally runs off to marry the hot-blooded Cowboy.
But that is the problem: Luke has witnessed Cowboy kill Hank, and Hank is Tally's brother. Why in the world would a 10-year-old kid not react much more intensely to his first young love running off with the man who murdered her brother? Would he not have tried to stop her? If he couldn't, would he not at least have been tortured by the thought of her going off with a murderer? Instead, Luke simply tells his grandfather what he has seen and then they decide, with almost no emotion, that it would be better not to tell anyone about the murder. End of story.
It is hard to think of a less realistic and less emotionally satisfying ending to the movie — perhaps a perfect ending to a bland, emotionless movie which takes two listless hours to go absolutely nowhere.
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