Concerning Lantern Hill

Lantern Hill, a Canadian adaptation of L.M. Montgomery's book Jane of Lantern Hill, is the story of a young girl whose parents are separated. Twelve year old Victoria Jane Stuart (Mairon Bennett) has lived with her mother Robin (Patricia Phillips) for as long as she can remember. Then one day they receive a letter from Jane's father Andrew (Sam Waterston), requesting a visit from his daughter. Jane, who has heard nothing but bad things about her father from her mother's family, reluctantly agrees to go.

Pros: To be perfectly honest, there are very few pros in this movie. The two best parts were Jane's friend Jody (Sarah Polley) and Violet and Justina Titus (Joyce Campion and Florence Patterson, respectively), who could be very funny.

Cons: The acting was bad. Particularly in Andrew's case, which is too bad because the whole emotional pull of the movie is centered on him. There are also some weird sort of dream/vision scenes with a ghost that are entirely out of place. I've never read the book, but the whole movie came across like a badly done abridgement. Many scenes and characters seemed to be included simply because they were necessary for later parts of the story - there was very little character development and almost no flow in the story development.

My Rating: T (broken marriage, "spooky" ghost scenes)

Picture from movieberry.com