Watch Mitch Albom's For One More Day For Free

Why so much hype?

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I really honestly do NOT like any sport that uses a ball. I am the consummate anti-sports fan.But this story lacked any central plot - character development was lacking -- and starkly, no music, to enhance viewing. It was bare naked, and quite ugly, imho. There was NO chemistry between the characters at all.A lot of "time switching" present to past to? and it was a little hard to follow where I was at, at any moment in the movie....They seem to go through the motions, but it did NOT dispel my disbelief.Based on what I saw, I will NOT read the book. Besides not liking sports, this just didn't do anything for me. When I keep looking at the clock figuring out how much time is left, oh yeah, this isn't going to be good.Very disappointing, considering his other two novels/movies were very good: "Tuesdays with Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet when you get to Heaven" I usually do things bass ackwards -- I see the movie first, THEN I invest the time to read the book. Pass. This one really vacuumed!

I was eager to see this film since I had enjoyed "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" so much. This film just wasn't in the same ballpark--pardon the allusion to baseball since the main character's overwhelming need to re-live his brief baseball glory days is a major plot point.Don't get me wrong: Imperioli and Burstyn give the kind of fine, heartfelt, and nuanced performances that audiences know they can count on them for.Imperioli has a way of making you feel for his character even when you want to slap some sense into him. Even though it's pretty obvious where the movie will go, there are a few surprises in the plot. So, if I was very moved by the lead performances and was already interested in the story, why didn't I like it more? Well, the framing device immediately distanced me from the movie and became an annoying intrusion as it went on. I felt the movie could have easily gone on for another half hour to flesh out key plot points. SPOILER: Also, even though I'm pretty sure the ending followed the book--I haven't read it, but the author wrote the script--, it added: A)more of the aforementioned annoying framing device of a third party narration and B)ended a film on an somewhat downbeat note that cancelled out the hopeful feelings the film had just engendered. Since I found the ending so hurried, I couldn't fully process and therefore fully feel all the emotions I feel the film wanted to elicit.I appreciated the excellent acting and fine attention to period detail. I just wish I'd liked it more.

Broken sports dreams have provided some of American movies' most poignant moments, from Field of Dreams to Resurrecting the Champ. This year's best sport flick, and one of 2007's Top Ten thus far (among the 295 films I've been able to see in theaters) is director Seth Gordon's documentary King of Kong, featuring real-life hero Steve Wiebe, a laid-off Boeing Aircraft engineer whose moment in the limelight for his high school nine's state championship try was ruined by an injury to his pitching arm, leaving his psyche nearly too fragile to take on the classic gaming establishment decades later in his successful quest to post the first legitimate million-plus Donkey Kong score in world history.Even though USA Today's TV critic panned One More Day (the official title "Oprah Winfrey presents Mitch Albom's One More Day" was automatically shortened to "Oprah Winfrey presents Mit" on my spreadsheet program; I thought she'd endorsed Obama?), I decided to make it my first made-for-TV film of 2007 because 1)I'd given 10 stars to Albom's previous TV project, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and 2)the premise echoed Steve Wiebe's story of recovering from a shattered baseball dream decades later.Unfortunately, as much as I like Mitch and baseball, I can only rate this effort 6 out of 10. Unlike Five People, you can see the twists and the supposedly Big Reveal at the end coming from nearly a mile a way here (from the center field warning track, in other words). Though Ellen Burstyn provides a little classier maternal advice to protagonist Chick (Michael Imperioli) than the 1926 Porter in the late sit-com My Mother the Car, seeing her prattling away to a former Soprano while moon-lighting as an ectoplasmic hairdresser to several of her expiring lady friends produces a kitchen klatch claustrophobia which may well have been relieved by more flashbacks to the nine years between the death of cup-of-coffee major leaguer Chick's mom and his exclusion from his only child's big day. Emily Wickersham, as Chick's grown daughter Maria, should have been given more to do; her character's typescript for her draft of "One More Day" got more air time than she did.Detroit Tigers fans will note that long-time Detroit Free Press sportswriter Albom snuck in the names of at least two long-gone bengals (Deivi Cruz and Ramon Santiago) in the background. My son still has the dollar bill Ramon signed for him at Tiger Fest years ago, but I doubt this flick will add much value to his currency.

Not the best movie, but I don't think it pretends to be.Michael Imperioli showed range as the lead character. It was good to see him as something other than a criminal/cop.Ellen Burstyn was graceful and elegant in her "effortless" portrayal of Michael's mother (I say effortless because she makes if look so easy, not that it is).My biggest problem with the movie came from what seemed to be gratuitous cuts to different time lines. To me it made the movie painfully choppy. The story/plot is not a complicated one, but the editing became increasingly irritating as the movie went on. For One More Day loosely reminds me of another movie that doesn't apologize for its sentimentality and uses of flashbacks to reveal its story, The Notebook. However, The Notebook makes effective use of flashbacks and knew where to draw the line.I lost my father recently, and speak to my mother regularly. This is the kind of movie that reminds us how precious the little time we all have is, and how more valuable time with our family is. Cherish the moments before they're gone.