A Painted House

Who knew? John Grisham doesn't only write legal potboilers that get turned into popcorn movies; he also writes sentimental coming-of-age dramas that get picked up by Hallmark Hall of Fame and transformed into innocuous, if well-meaning, filmed greeting cards: "Thinking of you during your mildly troubled adolescence." It's a summer that Luke Chandler (Logan Lerman), 10 years old and a bit of (a rascal) of course, will remember for the rest of his life, when a pretty girl, dangerous hired help, a surprise baby, and murder all converge on his family's rural Arkansas cotton farm, circa the 1950s, a time and place for valuable lessons about tolerance, where steely grandfathers (such as the one played by Scott Glenn here) hold that automatic transmissions are ‘citified.' In A Painted House, hormones will be stirred, insights will be gained, young lads will romp through the ‘crick' all day but still get baths every Saturday whether they need them or not, and unnecessary and redundant voiceovers will make sure nary an obvious point is missed. The worst--and best--that can be said about the film is that it's inoffensive. Optional. (M. Johanson)