Surrender, Dorothy (2006)

I love this movie so much

Powerful

One of my all time favorites.

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

hands down, one of the worse movies i've ever watched. the plot was abysmal. do people really act like this in real life ? it's one of the "please shoot me and put me out of my misery" movies. is there any reason i didn't turn it off and give up on it ? why did i watch it to the end ? i wasn't curious. i had no empathy at all. it made me feel that maybe this world would be a lot better off if all the sarahs died in a car crash. and their mothers too. maybe i had to watch it so when i saw a really good movie, i'd appreciate it. this movie is the touchstone of all Hollywood chick flick template detritus. should have invested this time in a video game.

Charles McDougall's resume includes directing episodes on 'Sex and the City', 'Desperate Housewives', Queer as Folk', 'Big Love', 'The Office', etc. so he comes with all the credentials to make the TV film version of Meg Wolitzer's novel SURRENDER, DOROTHY a success. And for the most part he manages to keep this potentially sappy story about sudden death of a loved one and than manner in which the people in her life react afloat.Sara (Alexa Davalos) a beautiful unmarried young woman is accompanying her best friends - gay playwright Adam (Tom Everett Scott), Adam's current squeeze Shawn (Chris Pine), and married couple Maddy (Lauren German) and Peter (Josh Hopkins) with their infant son - to a house in the Hamptons for a summer vacation. The group seems jolly until a trip to the local ice creamery by Adam and Sara) results in an auto accident which kills Sara. Meanwhile Sara's mother Natalie Swedlow (Diane Keaton) who has an active social life but intrusively calls here daughter constantly with the mutual greeting 'Surrender, Dorothy', is playing it up elsewhere: when she receives the phone call that Sara is dead she immediately comes to the Hamptons where her overbearing personality and grief create friction among Sara's friends. Slowly but surely Natalie uncovers secrets about each of them, thriving on talking about Sara as though doing so would bring her to life. Natalie's thirst for truth at any cost results in major changes among the group and it is only through the binding love of the departed Sara that they all eventually come together.Diane Keaton is at her best in these roles that walk the thread between drama and comedy and her presence holds the story together. The screenplay has its moments for good lines, but it also has a lot of filler that becomes a bit heavy and morose making the actors obviously uncomfortable with the lines they are given. Yes, this story has been told many times - the impact of sudden death on the lives of those whose privacy is altered by disclosures - but the film moves along with a cast pace and has enough genuine entertainment to make it worth watching. Grady Harp

I really liked Natalie and Diane Keaton's performance most of the time. I also liked Sara and her 'Gilmore Girls' type relationship with her mother. But I would much rather have seen more of this than what ended up happening.The movie I would have enjoyed would have included Sara and her mother and the cranky woman who owned the house where Sara and her friends stayed--who would have eventually given in and let Natalie clean up. There would have been ups and downs in the mother-daughter relationship, possibly involving the curmudgeonly neighbor with the flashlight, who would have warmed up to these wild and crazy people next door. The man Natalie took to the Japanese restaurant would have dated her. And the chef would have still been in this movie. I liked him.I did like all the references to 'The Wizard of Oz', my favorite movie of all time. I never heard anyone talk about that song played as Dorothy and her friends approached Emerald City. It's not one I would remember.I thought the reference to Woody Allen was cute, and I liked that hat Keaton wore in one scene which reminded me of 'Annie Hall', even though I didn't like that movie or Keaton in it. As for the rest of the group in the house--lock them all in the witch's castle, guarded by a bunch of soldiers chanting 'oh-we-oh, we-OH-oh.'

Watching CBS's "Surrender, Dorothy", I kept wondering why Diane Keaton would want to be in it (not because it's a television movie--with the dearth of enticing roles for slightly older actresses, it isn't any wonder why Academy Award winning performers such as Keaton turn to TV--but because it offers no opportunities for Keaton to shine). A single mother, grieving the sudden death of her twenty-something daughter, imposes upon--and gradually becomes friends with--the group of young people her daughter was close to at the time of her accident. Adapted from the novel, this teleplay gives us a group of self-absorbed characters one would cross the street to avoid. Aside from being coarse and dim, these phony people are incredibly unconvincing, as is the tidy scenario and the bungalow near the beach where the kids reside (one young man, who wears muscle shirts to tell us he's gay, hears Diane Keaton say, "Surrender, Dorothy" and actually asks, "That's from "The Wizard of Oz", right?"...no, genius, it's from "Citizen Kane"!). Keaton may have wanted to do this material based on the subject matter of confronting death. She tries turning this distinctly unlikable woman into a shadow of her own personage (lots of kooky outfits), but it doesn't sit well with the viewer since Keaton has always been warmly likable and flexible in a flaky way. Here, she's a crazed harpy who doesn't learn many lessons on her journey of self-discovery (the movie quickly forgets it's about a dead young woman and becomes an odyssey for the nervous wreck of a mom, who appears to be an overage hippie who has never lost anyone close to her). This is the kind of film actors promote on talk shows with the caveat, "It should help a lot of grieving mothers out there". I can't imagine it helping anyone since it is intrinsically a downer, muddled and baffling. It's deranged.