When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story (2010)

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I usually don't care for this type of film - spending ninety minutes witnessing the tragedy of the human condition is not my idea of entertainment. However this film is better than the run-of-the-mill tale of man's descent into misery and eventual rehabilitation - much better! The story isn't the thing, although it does give a sobering (if you'll excuse the pun) insight into alcoholism. The really striking thing about this film is the performance of its two principal players. Winona Ryder surprised me with the strength of her presentation, she goes through hell but she is never a figure of pity. And Barry Pepper was astoundingly, almost frighteningly, good. This man is a drunk's drunk, as real as I can imagine any performance being. This film isn't all Walt Disney and happy families (thank God) but it is very good - although you may feel you need a stiff drink when it's done!

While acknowledging that Bill Wilson was not perfect (um ... who is?), his contribution to alcoholic mankind was out of this world. I am speaking from someone who appreciates the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is quite fascinating. I've been to Dr. Bob and Anne's house in Akron, Ohio; A.A. World Services in New York several times; and Lois and Bill's Bedford Hills home - Stepping Stones. I enjoyed seeing the Bible where Bill wrote his pledges ~ at one of these places (been awhile; can't recall where.)The movie touched my heart. I appreciated the brilliance in its creation. Winona Ryder and Barry Pepper were outstanding as well. I highly recommend it to anyone.

Sure, the story of Mr and Mrs Wilson is a very true one, so true that we can hear around us now and then. Before watching it, I never know the alcoholism can be so devastating and make the victim so helpless. And the depression adds insult to the injury, making their lives even down to the bottom. I had to watch this part with great uneasiness. This lasted until the very end, where everything seemed to be OK again. What can I say, exactly such an up and down makes a warm story about devoting love and faith.I am impressed that Mr Wilson finally made it and, not only helped himself but also the others. But I am more impressed by his wife Lois, her devoting love and firm support to her husband, which, if I were in Mrs Wilson's shoes, would have divorced him at least three times over. Sure, this film is from her angle telling the story and understandably making her the closest entry point for the viewers. Nevertheless, her sweetness and forgiveness is never shadowed or shaded by this setting. One might wonder, who else can play Lois Wilson better than Ryder. I don't know how the real Lois looks like, but as long as the real story goes like the one in this film, the role will be tailored to Ryder. After all, I really can't think of another actress in Hollywood has a small share of Ryder's sweetness and shyness.

After I watched this eagerly awaited, but ultimately disappointing film, one of my first thoughts was that this film needed its own version of Al-Anon. Lois Wilson, like many spouses of users, spent all of her energies dealing with the fall-out of living with an alcoholic; did the movie have to do the same thing? When one has less than two hours to tell a complex story about a fascinating woman, did we really need an hour and twenty or thirty minutes of the constant cycle of dankness, shame, recriminations, and broken promises? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure this harrowing cycle repeats itself in every user's home--it's just that when there was so little time to tell such a complicated story, I would have preferred less binges and more character development. I didn't get a good sense of what drew these two together in the first place. There were so few scenes other than those of "saintly wife props up troubled husband," that I just didn't get a sense of them as a married couple. I didn't feel Pepper and Ryder had that much chemistry together. Since much was made of the fact that the real Lois Wilson was 3 or 4 years older than Bill, it didn't help the situation to cast an actress with such a youthful persons with an actor who always looked appreciably older than her--and, yes, I know drink ages you, but he looked a lot older than her at the wedding. Hallmark seems to have lost its mojo.Poster formerly known as FilmNutgm