The Magic Of Bell Isle (2012) We picked this one up amongst a pile of DVDs we bought at a library inventory sale. What intrigued us......here was a movie we absolutely never heard of, even though it features a major director, Rob Reiner and an iconic movie superstar, Morgan Freeman.
It falls somewhere in the territory between a typical Nicholas Sparks novel and a Hallmark channel drama-romance.
That would normally signify a sappy, manipulative, overly sentimental movie.
"The Magic Of Belle Isle" is indeed all of those things. But Rob Reiner possesses enough subtle skill and savvy filmmaking chops to to modulate this story's most obvious tropes. In other words, he knows how to properly initiate an emotional response without making the tearjerking look false.
In this task, he's enormously aided by the always gifted Freeman, who turns this corniest and oldest of caricatures, the curmudgeon who slowly rediscovers life ,love, purpose and humanity into a person you come to love and care for....(as do all the people around him....)
Freeman's an embittered, wheelchair bound, alcoholic, former writer of pulp western paperbacks. He's spending a summer at his nephew's house in a scenic New York state lakeside town. Life's been cruel and unkind to him, a drunk driver left him paralyzed and he's lost his beloved wife to cancer, along with the will to ever write a word again.
It takes the friendship and love of a divorced mom (the luminous Virginia Madsden) and her three young daughters to return this old damaged soul to the world of the living......and even find romance and a spark of his own long lost creativity.
Call us an old softie, but we fell for this movie hard. Freemans funny, touching and sad all at the same time and Madsden proves a perfect match for him. Think of it as comfort food for a cold winter night.......and with in a world where everyone's at each others throats about everything, a cup of movie chicken soup could do us all a little good. 3 stars (***)
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