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Our Very Own
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment // Unrated // July 3, 2007
List Price: $29.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
There's never an honest moment in "Our Very Own," with its phony Tennessee accents and its phonier melodramatic turns. The film, which marks the writing and directing debut of actor Cameron Watson, is something of a too-serious reworking of "Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael" awkwardly mixed with substandard semi-autobiographical coming-of-age nostalgia.
It's 1978 in the small town of Shelbyville, Tennessee (aka "Pencil City USA" thanks to its local pencil factory), and rumors are flying that hometown girl-made-good Sandra Locke (yes, the real-life star of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" and "The Outlaw Josey Wales") will be returning home, perhaps to see the annual horse show, or maybe to catch the local premiere of "Every Which Way But Loose." Nobody's more excited over this than Melora (Autumn Reeser), a teen who dreams of escaping Shelbyville and making it big as an actress. She worships Locke, hopefully more for her history as a local girl than for her talents hamming it up with Clint Eastwood and that orangutan.
Melora has a group of close friends, all of them with showbiz aspirations. Clancy (Jason Ritter) is a solid actor; Glen (Michael McKee) thinks Broadway is faaaaaabulous (and mom wonders why he won't get himself a girlfriend). Together with Bobbie (Halarie Burton) and Ray (Derek Carter), they put together a piece for the local talent show (a big, brassy musical number Glen writes all by himself) to celebrate Ms. Locke's triumphant return. (Oddly, for a song celebrating a homecoming, the lyrics turn out to be all about how wonderful it is to escape this lousy stinking town and find the glamorous life elsewhere.)
And yet "Our Very Own" isn't really about any of this. The script is more concerned with Clancy and his family. Dad Billy (Keith Carradine) is a drunk who can't hold a job, and his mounting debts are a burden to mom Joan (Allison Janney), who must deal with repo men and angry bankers while her husband hides behind the bottle. Joan finds some comfort in old pal Sally (Cheryl Hines), as the two wonder if they're doomed to spend their entire lives in the same neighborhood where they grew up.
It's an interesting angle - or could have been, if Watson had bothered to concentrate more on this. Instead, he clutters his film with too many subplots and ideas. There's something about Bobbie having a bully repeatedly harassing her, and something about the ladies' club putting together something special for Locke's return, and something about Melora's sister having a hard time working at the pencil factory, and something about Melora and Clancy's relationship growing beyond friendship, and something about a local family whose mother goes missing, and something about the kids always wanting to borrow Melora's mom's car so they can escape to Nashville for the night, even though they never do get outside their own city limits. Oh, and every now and then, we'll see a car drive by with a dog standing on top, although that's never, ever, ever explained, meaning it exists only for lazy quirk value.
Such clutter continues right through the end, in which we get the big talent show (at which Locke may or may not appear), only to learn that we still have twenty more minutes to go. The damn thing just keeps going and going, barely tying up all those loose ends. We finally arrive at the horse show, which is supposed to be the biggest of big finales but winds up playing out as just another scene (unlike the talent show before it, which plays as the capper to the whole story). It's a great big anticlimax in a movie that wasn't really leading up to much of anything in the first place.
The pacing is sluggish and the acting (apart from Janney and Carradine, who both deliver as fine a turn as possible) is too over-the-top to ever work. Which fits, really, as the drama never clicks anyway. Despite a constant urge to bring a dramatic honesty to the situations at hand, there's never any emotional truth to the proceedings, no moment that feels as real as Watson believes.
A side note: "Our Very Own" marks the first screen appearance by Mary Badham in nearly four decades. Badham, best remembered for her role as Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird," appears here in a brief, wordless cameo. Why she chose this film to mark a return to acting, or how Watson managed to convince her to do so, remains a mystery.
The DVD
Video & Audio
Apart from the occasional slight grain expected from an independent production, the anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer is crisp and clear in all regards. Visually, this is a very solid work. The soundtrack is presented in Dolby 5.1, and comes across just fine, with no issues to be had with the dialogue-heavy film. Optional French, Spanish, and English for the hearing impaired subtitles are provided.
Extras
None, apart from a set of Miramax/Disney previews (plus that classic "you wouldn't steal a car" anti-piracy PSA) that play as the disc loads; you can skip past them if you choose.
Final Thoughts
"Our Very Own" is one of those forced dramas that promise a glimpse at real life but never amount to anything more than cheap manipulation, hokey plotting, and predictable dialogue. It bores far more than it irritates, but that's not much of a plus. Skip It.
It's 1978 in the small town of Shelbyville, Tennessee (aka "Pencil City USA" thanks to its local pencil factory), and rumors are flying that hometown girl-made-good Sandra Locke (yes, the real-life star of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" and "The Outlaw Josey Wales") will be returning home, perhaps to see the annual horse show, or maybe to catch the local premiere of "Every Which Way But Loose." Nobody's more excited over this than Melora (Autumn Reeser), a teen who dreams of escaping Shelbyville and making it big as an actress. She worships Locke, hopefully more for her history as a local girl than for her talents hamming it up with Clint Eastwood and that orangutan.
Melora has a group of close friends, all of them with showbiz aspirations. Clancy (Jason Ritter) is a solid actor; Glen (Michael McKee) thinks Broadway is faaaaaabulous (and mom wonders why he won't get himself a girlfriend). Together with Bobbie (Halarie Burton) and Ray (Derek Carter), they put together a piece for the local talent show (a big, brassy musical number Glen writes all by himself) to celebrate Ms. Locke's triumphant return. (Oddly, for a song celebrating a homecoming, the lyrics turn out to be all about how wonderful it is to escape this lousy stinking town and find the glamorous life elsewhere.)
And yet "Our Very Own" isn't really about any of this. The script is more concerned with Clancy and his family. Dad Billy (Keith Carradine) is a drunk who can't hold a job, and his mounting debts are a burden to mom Joan (Allison Janney), who must deal with repo men and angry bankers while her husband hides behind the bottle. Joan finds some comfort in old pal Sally (Cheryl Hines), as the two wonder if they're doomed to spend their entire lives in the same neighborhood where they grew up.
It's an interesting angle - or could have been, if Watson had bothered to concentrate more on this. Instead, he clutters his film with too many subplots and ideas. There's something about Bobbie having a bully repeatedly harassing her, and something about the ladies' club putting together something special for Locke's return, and something about Melora's sister having a hard time working at the pencil factory, and something about Melora and Clancy's relationship growing beyond friendship, and something about a local family whose mother goes missing, and something about the kids always wanting to borrow Melora's mom's car so they can escape to Nashville for the night, even though they never do get outside their own city limits. Oh, and every now and then, we'll see a car drive by with a dog standing on top, although that's never, ever, ever explained, meaning it exists only for lazy quirk value.
Such clutter continues right through the end, in which we get the big talent show (at which Locke may or may not appear), only to learn that we still have twenty more minutes to go. The damn thing just keeps going and going, barely tying up all those loose ends. We finally arrive at the horse show, which is supposed to be the biggest of big finales but winds up playing out as just another scene (unlike the talent show before it, which plays as the capper to the whole story). It's a great big anticlimax in a movie that wasn't really leading up to much of anything in the first place.
The pacing is sluggish and the acting (apart from Janney and Carradine, who both deliver as fine a turn as possible) is too over-the-top to ever work. Which fits, really, as the drama never clicks anyway. Despite a constant urge to bring a dramatic honesty to the situations at hand, there's never any emotional truth to the proceedings, no moment that feels as real as Watson believes.
A side note: "Our Very Own" marks the first screen appearance by Mary Badham in nearly four decades. Badham, best remembered for her role as Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird," appears here in a brief, wordless cameo. Why she chose this film to mark a return to acting, or how Watson managed to convince her to do so, remains a mystery.
The DVD
Video & Audio
Apart from the occasional slight grain expected from an independent production, the anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer is crisp and clear in all regards. Visually, this is a very solid work. The soundtrack is presented in Dolby 5.1, and comes across just fine, with no issues to be had with the dialogue-heavy film. Optional French, Spanish, and English for the hearing impaired subtitles are provided.
Extras
None, apart from a set of Miramax/Disney previews (plus that classic "you wouldn't steal a car" anti-piracy PSA) that play as the disc loads; you can skip past them if you choose.
Final Thoughts
"Our Very Own" is one of those forced dramas that promise a glimpse at real life but never amount to anything more than cheap manipulation, hokey plotting, and predictable dialogue. It bores far more than it irritates, but that's not much of a plus. Skip It.
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