[.ca] Rambling Rose

From Amazon.com:
This overrated period comic-drama, set in Georgia in the 1930s, featured the first mother-daughter team to be nominated for acting Oscars in the same year. Laura Dern plays a free-wheeling young woman who is taken in as a domestic by an upper-class family, headed by Robert Duvall and Diane Ladd (Dern's real-life mother). Rose, who tends to let her sexual urges get the best of her, scandalizes everyone in three counties (including Duvall and Lukas Haas, who plays his son) with her willing spirit. Do those kind of loose morals warrant court-ordered sterilization? Or does this young woman just need a guiding hand? While many fell for this cornpone shtick, directed by Martha Coolidge, it's a hard movie to cozy up to because Rose is such a caricature and the rest of the characters (with the exception of the always exceptional Duvall) are such sticks. --Marshall Fine

nondescript:
Good acting but overall the movie is quite boring. This poor family is constantly trying to keep this ditsy loose girl out of trouble. They've charitably taken her in and of course she shows her appreciation by going after the hubby which was done so embarrassingly stupid. The entire movie is centered around this silly girl character. Ending seems kind of sad but I wish I never bought it! Gone With The Wind doesn't even cost that much and it is 1,000 times over the movie this one is!!!

boring:
boring, boring and 1000 times boring. Why do you wanna expend your money in such a boring film?

This movie portrays pedophilia:
This movie is a somewhat dry drama about the protagonist's childhood memories of a time when a somewhat loose woman came to stay with his family. It was dry, that is, until there came the scene where she decided to hop into bed with the kid and despite repeatedly stating that allowing it to happen "robbing the craddle" and that it was wrong (or something to that effect), she did not disuade the kid from continuing to rub her between the legs until she reached climax. At this point my interest in the movie waned considerably, but I watched it through to its rather bland conclusion. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I still can't get over that scene. Certainly a movie depicting a man in bed with a little girl with a similar encounter just would not be tolerated by mainstream movie goers, so why is this at all acceptable? I certainly cannot recommend this movie.

GREAT MOVIE! NOT AT ALL, A BORE!:
I THINK THIS IS A GREAT MOVIE! ROSE WAS A BIT FREAKY THOUGH! YOU HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE MOVIE! IT SHOULDN'T BORE YOU! 5 STARS*****

Akin to starting a leaf blower near killer bees:
Societies regard single, attractive, sexually available women with both idolization and uneasiness. The lust, envy, jealousy and otherwise tumultuous passions surrounding their passage through the populace can be disruptive of societal bonds, e.g. by "homewrecking", even though no fault of their own. One reason why the concept, at least, of marriage is valued so highly is that this cultural arrangement takes the problematic single female out of circulation, so to speak. And, social pressures cause opprobrium to be heaped on "loose women", even by the very men who are drawn to them. Of course, the feminist correctly sees these attitudes as blatantly sexist. However, even western culture's most chauvinistic pig is likely to regard the veiling and segregation of women in fundamentalist Islamic societies, for example, as an unacceptably extreme manifestation of those same attitudes. RAMBLING ROSE takes a compassionate look at the phenomenon of social turbulence caused by an "unattached" woman. Rose, flamboyantly played by Laura Dern, is the blithe, single, 19-year old girl invited to live with a very proper Southern family in the mid-1930s. The family, offering Rose help at this difficult time in her life, includes Daddy (Robert Duvall), Mother (Diane Ladd, Dern's real-life mother), and 13-year old Buddy (Lukas Haas). Rose, already possessing a checkered history acquired with unspecified men, is a sexual "free spirit", who proceeds to cause hormonal havoc in the town's male population. Even Daddy is bewitched. To Buddy, Rose is, unsurprisingly, the godsend of a new awareness. Of the adults, only Mother, recognizing Rose as essentially guileless, staunchly defends her as the repercussions of the Siren's residence start to add up. A better film on much the same theme is Y2K's MALENA - a superb Italian production. Nonetheless, RAMBLING ROSE is delightful. Dern is positively captivating. Duvall is at his best, which is pretty darn good by any measure. Ladd portrays Mother as a slightly eccentric individual whose generosity towards and understanding of Rose is a clear counterpoint to the hardening attitudes of the other adults. The Buddy character should remind all males in the viewing audience of that time when they were 13 and discovering girls as beings with something more to offer than simply opportunities for boorish teasing. I like this film immensely.