One True Thing

It's unclear who imagined that we needed a new version of 1983's Oscar-winning weepie Terms of Endearment, but what's truly nonplussing is that somebody felt that Carl One False Move Franklin (what's next? One Ambiguous Situation?) was the ideal director for what is essentially a glorified movie-of-the-week. Which is not to say that he doesn't do a fine, credible (if undistinguished) job--as, for that matter, do the principal actors: Renee Zellweger (Jerry Maguire) as an ambitious magazine writer; Meryl Streep (Oscar-nominated yet again, and--sigh--deserving yet again) as her cancer-stricken, irritatingly cheery mom; and William Hurt as her somewhat cold, philandering father. Indeed, the entire film, apart from an atypically ham-handed framing device, is thoroughly professional; what's missing is any spark of originality, or sense that anyone involved invested much of themselves into the material. Presumably, Anna Quindlen's acclaimed novel, from which this film was adapted, is something more than an amalgam of movie-derived clichés; if so, those qualities quietly disembarked somewhere along the journey from page to screen. What remains is a host of first-rate artists wasting their time re-chewing somebody else's gum. Optional. (M. D'Angelo)