As a movie enthusiast for several decades, I've seen thousands of movies. I thought this was one of the very, very best. It's the first time I've given an IMDb rating of 10. The writing was great and the 3 principals gave very strong performances. In fact, I started to search to see if Lauren Holly was at least given a 1998 Best Actress nomination. However, I stumbled across the movie's having been pulled from distribution before 250,000 had seen it. So the selection committee would have never have even considered it. What a shame – I was stunned! I went here to IMDb to see what was the disconnect between my experience and most everyone else's. I saw that 1,378 reviewers gave an average 5.7 (out of 10) rating. The last time I really liked a movie the average was 8.5. I looked at the written reviews and saw a lot of people who really liked it. One suggested that if one was looking for a blockbuster or escapist fare one wouldn't like it. Maybe the writing was too good, too true to life? However, several Burns' slice of life films had been blockbuster hits so that couldn't be the whole story. Maybe, people got so into the film that out of the 3 plausible endings 2 out of 3 were deeply disappointed by the 1 selected. However, I contend, the 95% of the movie that went before the ending had the value of showing people struggling with difficult emotional decisions that were somewhat beyond their control as they were intertwined with other humans struggling with their own difficult emotional decisions – so the audience could just select whatever virtual ending one wanted and be moved by the heart of the movie. There's no objective right choice, just choose what's right for you and realize there's no guarantees in life. So my first few sentences notwithstanding, don't go in with high expectations – the statistics seem to be against it. If you only see a few films, then go with the super popular films. However, if you've "seen them all" and are casting about for something above mediocrity and you like slice of life, it's worth the gamble. I read the negatives and disagreed and they gave no insight into objective flaws – they just describe why they personally didn't like seeing that particular slice of life, etc. It's a GREAT film, but you might just not like it.
Review of No Looking Back
