Carry Me Home (2004)

Simply Perfect

Great Film overall

Best movie ever!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

All right, I loved this little movie. I had no expectations (by surprise on cable, Showtime, one early morning) and was impressed by the fantastic work of the stellar cast as well as the period look. This is a film to Tivo and watch with the whole family (about 9 and older). Now that I'm posting this review and see that others have dismissed it. I don't understand. Sure it's not funny, but it has a great message about the power of love and it goes back to simpler, beautiful time. Penelope Ann Miller is Amazing. And what ever happened to the lead girl, Ashley Rose Orr? She is a real find. I loved Kevin Anderson in a very complicated part and David Basche is Handsome and makes you care about a character who on the surface seems like a jerk. This seemed like a low budget movie, but it looks great and really captures the time. Kudos all around to the crew and cast.

DVD from my public library. Digital 5.1 sound, but was not done very well. Picture was just OK for DVD.Penelope Ann Miller has always been a favorite of mine, and here she stars as Harriet, a war widow in 1949 rural NY, with two young children. But it is more the story of her daughter Carrie (Ashley Rose Orr, talented kid who reminds one of a young Tatum O'Neal) who will not let loose of dad, wears his dog tags, and sometimes his army clothes. She also runs with the guys and is the only girl in the club. This is her growing up story.Kevin Anderson plays a mildly retarded Charlie who lives near. He is a kind soul but the kids make fun of him, and play dastardly jokes on him, some destructive. But that's they way kids are, they don't often think of the broader consequences of their actions.Harriet is a dressmaker and one of her clients tries to matchmake with a generally pretty good catch, but Carrie resents any man intruding on her life.Overall a marginal movie, but Penelope Ann Miller is good as the mom, and little Ashley Rose is superb as the daughter.SPOILERS. In the end the kids' practical jokes end up destructive, there is a fire, a shooting, but all survive. As Charlie is being taken to a home which is more suitable, Carrie realizes all the harm she has participated in, runs to tell Charlie she is sorry. Mom's suitor turns out to have a fatal flaw, he isn't caring enough about the downtrodden, mom has to turn down his proposal, but mom and daughter bond.

In a time when made for television films from HBO in particular and Showtime et al seem to be taking more chances with riskier topics than those flooding the theater screens, along comes CARRY ME HOME with a thud that hearkens back to the whiny tearjerkers of twenty years ago. While the premise of the story appears to be warm coming of age of a young girl with only a single mother to guide her growth, the film fragments with so many subplots that are quickly and incautiously pasted together in the end, resolving everything in a shallow overly sentimental and unsatisfying mess.Marlboro, NY 1947, a time when the country is recovering from WW II, which includes the families of GIs killed in the war and the economy in ruins. Harriet (Penelope Ann Miller) keeps together her household of two children - Carrie (Ashley Rose Orr) and Brian (Harrison Chad) - by being a seamstress to the likes of Mrs. Gortimer (Jane Alexander), a town gossip and matchmaker who is advising Harriet to pay attention to the return of Bernard (David Alan Rasche) as a potential 'marrying kind'. Harriet spends her days working and remembering her GI husband killed in the war. Daughter Carrie is approaching puberty and yet refuses to behave like a girl, wearing her father's dogtags and jeans, running instead with a group of boys including her younger brother and two other lads. The 'gang' has a secret clubhouse, make mischief, taunt the mentally challenged neighbor Charlie (Kevin Anderson), unfortunate son of Grizzle (Leo Burmester) who abuses his unwanted son by forcing him to live in a barn. Charlie's only friends are the puppies he treasures. The destructive pranks played on pathetic Charlie include stealing one of his pups, destroying the food garden of Grizzle, pouring sugar in the gas tank of Grizzle's John Deere tractor, etc. In other words this little group of kids is cruel and their shenanigans are mean-spirited.Harriet finds it impossible to control the behavior of Carrie and quite out of keeping with the 1940s family unit, Carrie sasses her mother viciously and in general is an unlikable brat. When Bernard begins his courtship of Harriet the prospect of Harriet's finding a modicum of happiness is undermined by Carrie's behavior. In a particularly cruel evening's prank, Grizzle's garden is destroyed, Charlie is reduced to self-mutilation because of the stealing of his pup, and the lowly barn in which he lives is destroyed by fire. Grizzle and Charlie survive and the effect of this final disaster on the lives of Harriet and her children and their 'emotional awakening' serves to make a hanky call and end the story with an unsatisfying bump.The script by Christopher Fay is pedestrian, leaving the film with poorly motivated characters about whom it is difficult to care. Penelope Ann Miller tries her best to make the most out of Harriet, but Ashley Rose Orr renders one of the least likable young girls on film. This is a black and white script without motivation. Jace Alexander directs, which probably explains why his mother Jane Alexander consented to do the tiny walk-on part to give the film attention. The crew manages to make the mood of America in the post-war years plausible, but the dialogue assigned to the characters undermines those attempts. There must be an audience for these soap opera films: it is a shame this one couldn't have been better. Grady Harp

"Carry Me Home" is an ideal movie for a Sunday afternoon -- a simple plot, characters with simple motivations, no foul language, no sex, laid back and serene in it's mildly quirky way. It's full of country ideals and charm, and the violin-led background music does a great job of setting place and mood.Strong performances from Penelope Ann Miller does complex emotions so well, and David Alan Rasche is a charming but empty suitor, Ashley Rose Orr is a find as tormented Carrie. Jane Alexander is a bit wasted as a gossiping society matron.Clearly, the penultimate performance of this film is Kevin Anderson, who's mentally-challenged Charlie somehow becomes the emotional fulcrum of the film. Charlie is not just a character of woe and pity, as is usually represented, but also one of rage and an eagerness to be loved. Anderson can do more with a facial expression than most actors can do with a page of dialogue. The last 15 minutes will generate plenty of tears, and the moments just keep on coming.I was left feeling a bit emotionally drained when all was said and done. How rare is it to find a movie that makes you feel anything?