FilmBlather.com

"Our beauty is out power, our strength. We can never allow them to change us, to lessen us."

Many films better than White Oleander, and filmmakers more talented than Peter Kosminsky, would have done unspeakable things for the cast that was assembled to make what is a glorified Lifetime production, if an engaging one. There's a lot of good stuff here, but there's also a lazy script, relying too much on lengthy, overblown monologues and easy, one-shot characterization. The film has the capacity to surprise us, but doesn't use it nearly often enough.

It's worth mentioning that any movie that ends with the phrase "I know my mother loves me" already has two strikes against it in my book. No mean feat, then, that I didn't actually despise the movie, which is for women and about women but not very intelligently. It begins with one of those vague voiceovers, which insists that "she would have been proud of me" in a manner as out of context as it is used in this sentence. We are then rapidly introduced to Astrid Magnussen (Allison Lohman), a budding woman and artist, and her mother Ingrid (Michelle Pfeiffer). Ingrid is a modified version of the Hollywood free-spirit, a fierce feminist who insists that her daughter must never depend on anyone (except her): not another man, not God, not anyone. That directive is put to the test when Ingrid is arrested for murder, setting Astrid on a disastrous trip through foster homes and halfway houses, always in the shadow of her forceful, ever-present mother.

Her first stop is the volatile home of a self-professed Jesus freak named Starr (an unrecognizable Robin Wright Penn) and somewhat less psychotic boyfriend (Cole Hauser). That ends badly, as Starr's jealousy and delusion that Astrid is after her significant other ends in the girl being shot, taken to the hospital, then left at a halfway house, where she meets a sheepish orphan named Paul (Almost Famous' Patrick Fugit), also a talented artist. They seem to bond, but Astrid is adopted again, this time by a floundering actress (Renee Zellweger) and her rich tv-industry husband (Noah Wyle). She thinks she has found a perfect, loving home, but then the actress goes to prison to talk to Ingrid, and things go terribly awry once again.

There are times when White Oleander manages to defy expectations: I was absolutely positive that one of the men would turn out to be a sexual abuser, but was proven wrong both times. I was impressed, too, by the distinct anti-religious sentiment expressed by Ingrid early in the film, and though Astrid eventually becomes independent of her mother, this is one of the first movies I've seen where an atheist character is treated fondly.

By the third act, the film's missteps become too copious to ignore. The dynamic between Astrid and Ingrid is entirely one-dimensional and predictable, and when the former turns into a Goth to defy her mother, I found myself rooting for Ingrid, even if the script does force her to spout the same inanities about beauty and femininity every time she appears on screen. The final scenes deteriorate into a series of impassioned speeches by just about every character, until the closing voiceover, which made me nauseous.

But my God, what a cast. Pfeiffer, not neglected in the hair and make-up department even in the prison scenes, is radiant, making her repetitive character sympathetic and interesting. Zellweger is genuinely sweet as the lonely actress who meets an unfortunate act, and I didn't even realize that the maniacal Bible-thumper in the beginning was played by Robin Wright Penn, perhaps because my predominant image of her is still as the wife in Unbreakable. Lohman, who is in every scene, recalls a combination of Kirsten Dunst and Leelee Sobieski, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your opinion of those two (and maybe your gender). And Patrick Fugit, in his follow-up to Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, continues to impress.

White Oleander is the essence a "chick flick," often resembling a particularly treacly Oprah Book-of-the-Month selection, but individual scenes work, and the movie is never boring. Like in Banger Sisters two weeks ago, when all else fails, you can content yourself with watching the cast members do their thing.