Seven Days in Utopia (2011)

Fresh and Exciting

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a well written dive into life lessons that people need to succeed at their goals. A golfer winds up in Utopia Texas after losing and imploding during the last hole of a major tournament. He finds another golfer there who teaches him about life and helps improve his game at the same time. He then leaned all of the approaches to life that he needs to succeed. The lessons are life lessons written into a complex story that everyone should see at least once. There are some stereotypical characters in this movie, but beyond that it is good. It is not a comedy, but it has a tiny bit of romance and good feeling in it. Therefore, I would recommend it.

It's always a bad sign during a movie when I find myself thinking, "I should be doing something else with my time." Five minutes into the film and it was depressingly easy to guess what was going to happen next, and to even mouth dialog before it was said. Movies like this are like candy for the brain, which is spinning in neutral because there was no substantial story that wasn't easily predicable.I felt that it was a very shallow and predictable story; the comments about it being just like Pixar's "Cars" are correct. Way too formulaic.And finally there's the overly-strong religious message, with some reviews touting it as a great movie *because* of the message. Sorry, but using a work of fiction written by believers as proof of faith is called circular reasoning. Self-created "facts" don't make for good faith, or a good movie.

Finally a main-stream fictional movie that's not afraid of incorporating a Christian message (quite rare these days). I chose this film while on a flight back from Japan solely because I saw that Robert Duvall (Genius) was attached. I had no idea it was even about Golf! And after the film finished I watched it again (either that or go thru the rest of the Hollywood-hyped crap available) and for all the "haters" out there who discarded this film purely because the director incorporates scripture, what can I say? Perhaps try opening your own closed and brainwashed minds and watch, listen and learn. And if that doesn't work? Well, then I Guess I'll just have to pray for ya'll!

Pro golfer Luke Chisholm (Black) self- destructs on the last hole of a tournament and takes off in his car. He sees a fork in the road and takes the road to Utopia, a Texas town. After crashing into a fence he is met by Johnny Crawford (Duvall) a rancher and once a pro golfer back in the day. Johnny sees an opportunity to help the young pro and he gives Luke a proposition. This started out like a pretty good golf story, but there were problems with the acting and pacing all around. I wasn't convinced about anything because I had the feeling none of the actors were convinced either. Oh, they went thru the motions, but you could tell there was something missing: belief in what they were saying.Duvall pontificates throughout this and that's okay up to a point, but I had the feeling he knew he had to say the lines, but again, there was something missing: conviction. He said his lines like he was on roller skates. It was like we really didn't get into the story but here come the lines anyway. Something was missing: conviction. Maybe it was too much pontification. The scenes and dialogues felt rushed, and there was too much hesitation when other actors said their lines. Again, no conviction. Perhaps there was too much material to cover to allow a scene to develop so it became comfortable, likable and convincing. The last quarter of the movie became a religious quest and it became a little too much. The director should have checked with Kirk Cameron (child star on Growing Pains TV show) who stars in many of these types of religious themed movies. Actually, I felt blind-sided. For most of the movie, it was about golf training, such as it was, then we get hit with a pretty heavy religious aspect the rest of the way. And, here we find conviction in Johnny's dialogue. Took long enough to find it. Where was it before?Of course, Luke manages to learn the lessons Johnny gave him and when he has a putt on the last hole of the Texas Open to win the tournament, the movie stops in mid-putt and we get hit with: go to http://www.didhemaketheputt.com.OK, I bit and went there and I have no idea if he made the putt, but that wasn't the point of the movie, now was it? And, when I went there, I was hit with more religious material. Had I known about all the religious stuff in the beginning, this probably wouldn't have bothered me. Hey, I have watched some Kirk Cameron movies and they are good. But, here, I felt I was blind-sided. After all this was not anything like The Greatest Game Ever Played or a Bobby Jones story. (5/10) Violence: Not really. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: Soft stuff only and not much of it.