The Man in the Moon

Back when I had a video store, I got a copy of this and my mother recommended it, but I never watched it. But now it was worth picking up as Reese Witherspoon’s debut, and she was really good from the get-go, as the 14-year-old tomboy with an Elvis passion in Fifties Louisiana, who falls hard for an older boy, only to lose him first to her older sister, and then to a farm accident. Robert Mulligan, as the veteran of To Kill a Mockingbird and Summer of ’42, knows how to direct this borderline schmaltz. Sam Waterston and Tess Harper make for an appealing and believable pair of parents. But when the teen romantic comedy turns to tragedy, the energy just leaks right out of the enterprise. Reese, however, is a star in the making. (cf. Scarlett Johansson in Manny & Lo.) (1991, dvd, n.) *7-*