Watch Surrender, Dorothy For Free

People are voting emotionally.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

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

I very much enjoyed watching this film. I taped it while watching so that i could review it later. I actually enjoyed the second viewing more since i was able to absorb more of the clever dialog between Natalie and Adam, the 2 main characters. I thought the way this story evolved was very thought provoking. I got very intrigued with how Natalie was going to interact with her daughter's friends , at first it seemed that she was going to spew a lot of animosity but once she started interacting more pleasantly i had to see how this visit was going to unfold. i wasn't disappointed . Gradually the secrets that Sara kept from her mother started to reveal a daughter who was not so perfect, a flawed human being like most of us who wanted her freedom from a domineering mother who thought she knew her daughter but unfortunately had to learn in a very painful manner that sometimes to really love someone you have to give them their freedom. The viewers who stuck with this film to the end saw a very touching performance from Diane Keaton (who is always wonderful, even in some of her less well received films-think Town and Country). The closing scene of Diane Keaton driving home was well worth waiting for, revealing that anyone who loves another human being has got to learn that we have to live our own lives, we love others but don't own them and ultimately we have to let go. It's a hard lesson but well worth contemplating now and then.Thank you CBS for this broadcast,it was worth the long wait.

I really liked Natalie and Diane Keaton's performance most of the time. I also liked Sara and her 'Gilmore Girls' type relationship with her mother. But I would much rather have seen more of this than what ended up happening.The movie I would have enjoyed would have included Sara and her mother and the cranky woman who owned the house where Sara and her friends stayed--who would have eventually given in and let Natalie clean up. There would have been ups and downs in the mother-daughter relationship, possibly involving the curmudgeonly neighbor with the flashlight, who would have warmed up to these wild and crazy people next door. The man Natalie took to the Japanese restaurant would have dated her. And the chef would have still been in this movie. I liked him.I did like all the references to 'The Wizard of Oz', my favorite movie of all time. I never heard anyone talk about that song played as Dorothy and her friends approached Emerald City. It's not one I would remember.I thought the reference to Woody Allen was cute, and I liked that hat Keaton wore in one scene which reminded me of 'Annie Hall', even though I didn't like that movie or Keaton in it. As for the rest of the group in the house--lock them all in the witch's castle, guarded by a bunch of soldiers chanting 'oh-we-oh, we-OH-oh.'

Watching CBS's "Surrender, Dorothy", I kept wondering why Diane Keaton would want to be in it (not because it's a television movie--with the dearth of enticing roles for slightly older actresses, it isn't any wonder why Academy Award winning performers such as Keaton turn to TV--but because it offers no opportunities for Keaton to shine). A single mother, grieving the sudden death of her twenty-something daughter, imposes upon--and gradually becomes friends with--the group of young people her daughter was close to at the time of her accident. Adapted from the novel, this teleplay gives us a group of self-absorbed characters one would cross the street to avoid. Aside from being coarse and dim, these phony people are incredibly unconvincing, as is the tidy scenario and the bungalow near the beach where the kids reside (one young man, who wears muscle shirts to tell us he's gay, hears Diane Keaton say, "Surrender, Dorothy" and actually asks, "That's from "The Wizard of Oz", right?"...no, genius, it's from "Citizen Kane"!). Keaton may have wanted to do this material based on the subject matter of confronting death. She tries turning this distinctly unlikable woman into a shadow of her own personage (lots of kooky outfits), but it doesn't sit well with the viewer since Keaton has always been warmly likable and flexible in a flaky way. Here, she's a crazed harpy who doesn't learn many lessons on her journey of self-discovery (the movie quickly forgets it's about a dead young woman and becomes an odyssey for the nervous wreck of a mom, who appears to be an overage hippie who has never lost anyone close to her). This is the kind of film actors promote on talk shows with the caveat, "It should help a lot of grieving mothers out there". I can't imagine it helping anyone since it is intrinsically a downer, muddled and baffling. It's deranged.

My mother asked me if I wanted to watch a movie with her while I was visiting. I normally don't watch TV movies. I don't have the patience for them or even most cinematic movies these days, but every now and again, I'll be surprised by what the networks come up with. So, not wanting to disappoint my mother, I acquiesced. Spotting Vilmos Zsigmond's name as the cinematographer during the opening credits made me feel a little more hopeful.Diane Keaton plays Natalie a mother grieving the loss of her daughter Sara. Sara was spending the Summer with old friends of hers at a New England beach house. Their vacation had just started when she dies in a car accident on the way back from getting ice cream. In order to deal with her death, Natalie ends up taking her daughter's place at the beach house. Initially, it is an awkward situation for everyone on two different levels. On top of dealing with Sara's death, Natalie never really cared for Sara's friends. Dealing with their own grief, the friends still recognize the delicate nature of the situation, knowing Sara was all she had, and humor her desire to be in the environment where her daughter spent the remaining days of her life.The acting is good. Keaton is, of course the standout. She runs the gamut of emotions without turning herself into a clique, even when the material starts to border on the ridiculous. The scene where she hallucinates the clouds spelling out "Surrender Dorothy" (the "Land of Oz" reference her and Sara greeted each other with) is silly, but Keaton conveys the delirium Natalie feels at thinking she could actually bring her daughter back to life.At first, I wished that we had gotten to know Sara just a bit more than we did. But, then, I realized that it made sense for us to only get a glimpse of her, because, as with the loss of anyone close to us, we all experience the desire to have just spent a little bit more time with them and/or gotten to know them just a little bit more. One of the things that I liked about this movie is that a lot of the way it took shape was very deliberate and effective. Another example would be a scene early on, before her death, when they are sitting outside, talking, drinking and having a good time. The camera kept going around in circles. I rolled my eyes thinking it was pretentious and then I even started feeling a little nauseous. Afterwards, I realized that its hyperkineticness served the story. They were friends, sitting around catching up with each other at a feverish pace, while inebriated. The memory of that night as their final one together with Sara probably took on a heightened reality after she died.Because it is a TV movie, I don't judge it too harshly. It is at mercy of much higher censorship standards than a theatrically or video released film. And, I was surprised by some of the content in this CBS-movie-of-the-week. We saw people taking hallucinogenic mushrooms. We saw two young men in a homosexual relationship. We saw a woman in her late 50's in a lead role! None of this was without limits, of course. We saw the young heterosexual couple in bed, as well as them kissing. We saw no such interaction in the homosexual couple. That isn't to say that it should have occurred, only that to me it suggested a double standard. It would have been fine if I didn't see anyone romantically in bed together. But, this is a major network. I give it kudos for the aforementioned risky content it included (even if it was necessary just to tell the story). So, if it has to pay the price by not so subtly (to me, anyway) asserting a conservative bias, so be it. Just don't shoot be for observing it.For a while, I was hoping the writers were shrewdly implying Natalie was this close-minded Republican, who was, ultimately, teachable. She reminded me so much of Bree Van Kamp from American TV's "Desperate Housewives." She is a very conservative woman who had a very unusual response to grieving the loss of her husband. We never really understood why Natalie wasn't friends with Adam, her daughter's best friend. We know that she didn't invite any of Sara's friends to the funeral, but there was specific discussion of her disdain towards Adam. We also know, towards the end of the film that she blamed him from keeping her daughter from moving on with a straight man. However, through most of the movie, I was thinking she was homophobic, but the writers didn't just come right out with it. But, then, she didn't judge Adam's boyfriend on the merit's of his gay relationship with Adam, especially considering his philandering ways. I was also trying to insinuate an antiabortion stance from the reaction she had when she found out about Sara's pregnancy. But, it could pain any mother in her position, whether pro-Choice or antiabortion, who found that her recently deceased daughter had given up an opportunity to give birth and, therefore, had given up a chance to leave a part of her behind. Oh, well, there goes that theory.My favorite line involved Natalie reading Adam's latest play. She alluded to his previous work being a really good comedy (which begged the question of how she could go on not liking him, yet interested in what he had to write) and sensed that she was now dealing with a really uninteresting drama. She then insisted that he cannot go all Woody Allen on her "like when he made'Interiors.'" Any movie that can appropriately and humorously use a Woody Allen reference (delivered by one of his former muses no less) is alright in my book. Too bad my mother was asleep at that point to enjoy it!