Robards' senile paterfamilias is, regrettably, a grave embarrassment.
Comment
02/09/06
A Thousand Acres (1997)
24
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:46
Fresh:11
Rotten:35
Average Rating:4.4/10
Consensus: A Thousand Acres makes disappointingly sudsy stuff out of the source material, but benefits from solid performances by a strong cast.
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: A THOUSAND ACRES, director Jocelyn Moorhouse's screen adaptation of Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, finds skeins of KING LEAR-like conflict running through the bedrock of a midwestern... [More]
Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jason Robards
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Reviews for A Thousand Acres
Top CriticAll the characters are sharply defined, with Lange and Pfeiffer in fine form, and Robards suitably sour as the grumpy old curmudgeon, but the plot has been watered down until it is little more than a Waltons-styled soap.
07/03/08
Top CriticSadly for all involved, A Thousand Acres is doomed to the label "interesting."
01/01/00
Top CriticEnter A Thousand Acres at your own risk.
01/01/00
Click to read the article
03/24/02
Top CriticClick to read the article
04/12/02
Top CriticClick to read the article
10/18/08
Top CriticNo review available.
01/21/05
I don't know anything to redeem the movie except for an understated performance from Leigh -- unless you're into masochism. Avoid.
01/01/00
Episodic and occasionally annoying and bland, the movie goes melodramatic long before the finale.
01/01/00
While many scenes are passionately acted and directed, the overall film is disjointed, and lacks a logical progression of time.
01/01/00
No review available.
02/08/04
From the first frame, a silhouetted barn and windmill at dawn, the images feel prefab, and the all-purpose wistful tinkly piano and sighing strings pin them even more boringly down.
07/03/08
That Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres would become a movie was inevitable. Another virtual certainty was its bowdlerization.
01/01/00
Great novels are usually adapted into bad movies.
05/07/04
A parcel of high calibre stars isn't enough to save the morbid and dragging A Thousand Acres.
01/01/00
No review available.
06/22/05
This intimate and riveting portrait of sibling hate, forgiveness, and love hits the mark.
02/28/02
Ploddingly literal, A Thousand Acres is basically a star vehicle that relies on superior acting to redeem it. It does have superior acting, but that's not nearly enough.
01/01/00
Owing more to the spirit of Oprah than to the Bard, pic serves up an earnest but unconvincing stew of received notions about family dysfunction, awkwardly put across by a script wheezing with melodramatic contrivances.
07/03/08
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