Far North

Written and directed by the amazingly talented Sam Shepard (Pulitzer-prize winning playwright, and noted actor), this disappointing black comedy pokes fun at a backwoods Minnesota family composed almost entirely of eccentrics. The exception is Katie (Jessica Lange), a daughter working in the Big Apple, who returns home when her father, Bertrum (Charles Durning), is hospitalized following an accident with his horse, Mel. Convinced that the horse tried to kill him, Bertrum demands that Katie exact his revenge: by drawing an "X" on Mel's forehead, and sending him to horse heaven. Katie's turmoil over whether to obey her father or her heart makes for an intermittently funny story, but it is too slim a thread on which to hang an entire feature film. So Shepard fleshes out the minimal plot with zany characters: a mother who's practically senile, a grandmother who is contentious, an uncle who drinks, a sister who loves the horse (and her daughter, who loves anything that happens by). But a bunch of one-note weirdoes without a compelling theme to link them becomes rather boring. All in all, a trite effort from a gifted writer. Libraries would do better to pick up Shepard's True West (PBS Video). Not recommended. (R. Pitman)