Al Gardner Movies
James Mangold's Walk the Line tells the life story of country music legend Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix), focusing primarily on the long courtship he had with June Carter (Reese Witherspoon). The film is structured as an extended flashback opening with Cash readying to take the stage at his historic Folsom Prison Concert. The film touches on his childhood, relating a horrific early incident from his life and establishing the troubled relationship he would have with his father (Robert Patrick). Cash joins the military and leaves home. During his time in the armed services he begins writing songs and romances a hometown girl (Ginnifer Goodwin). After the end of his duty he settles down and attempts to begin a music career, but his wife has trouble adjusting to his dreams. Cash auditions for Sam Phillips (Dallas Roberts), signs to Sun Records, and soon finds himself on tour with a roster of young soon to be legends that includes Elvis Presley (Tyler Hilton) and Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Malloy Payne). On this tour he meets June Carter, the daughter of the famous Carter family, and they take a liking to each other although she refuses any serious advances from him. Cash gains world wide fame thanks in part to the inspiration he gets from June, but eventually his marriage crumbles and he develops a serious drug addiction. The film is based on Cash's autobiographies. Phoenix and Witherspoon performed all of their own singing in the movie, just as Sissy Spacek and Beverly D'Angelo did in Coal Miner's Daughter a quarter-century before. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, (more)
Jack Black continues his march to stardom with this typical Farrelly brothers blend of broad comedy and a heartfelt message. Black is Hal Larsen, a shallow man rapidly approaching middle age whose superficiality can be attributed to his father's deathbed admonition to only date young, beautiful women. Hal and his best friend, Mauricio (Jason Alexander), have taken the advice to heart, but Hal finds all of his physically impressive girlfriends consistently lacking in other qualities that would make them ideal mates. When he bumps into self-help guru Tony Robbins (playing himself), the motivational entrepreneur is intrigued by Hal's predicament and hypnotizes him so that he'll only see the inner beauty of women. Hal is quickly smitten with Rosemary Shanahan (Gwyneth Paltrow), a blonde Peace Corps volunteer who's tenderhearted, funny, and intelligent. She is also gorgeous and meets Hal's basic criteria of outer perfection, but what he doesn't realize is that Robbins' spell is working and he cannot see that Rosemary actually weights 300 pounds. When Mauricio is finally able to snap Hal out of his charmed state, Hal's in love with the inwardly perfect woman and must overcome his obsession with beauty. The script for Shallow Hal (2001) was developed when Peter Farrelly enjoyed the humorous letters written to a mutual friend by Sean Moynihan, a computer software executive who followed the filmmaker's advice to take up screenwriting. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, (more)
