PiraBit
if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.
Sameer Callahan
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Blake Rivera
If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.
Brooklynn
There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.
Kirpianuscus
like food, few films are the expressions of taste. Surrender, Dorothy is one. not the script, not the acting, not the moral lesson are important in its case. only the final taste.like a lemon with sugar. a tragedy. a mother. few couples. and the meaning of life. nothing new. but useful for the rediscover of old themes, for Diane Keaton, for the fragility of truth and for not bad cast looking save a story who is not real convincing. a film about miracles. like many others. not bad, not good. only decent. with a huge potential, using ordinary way, proposing a drama who is far to be touching but seems be a nice summer story with few interesting scenes, good actors and high expectations. a film about an event who change lives. and who gives few directions for the imagination of viewer.
hhammon
I waited for this movie to play in great anticipation. Assuming it would be more accurately portrayed like the movie, "The Christmas Box" based on the book by Richard Paul Evans. I sent out many emails to friends and family asking them to please watch this show, hoping they would better understand a tiny amount of my "new" life. After seeing this movie I was so disappointed. As a mother who lost her only child in November 2003 and REALLY knowing the pain, I had hoped that this movie would shed light to parents who "think" they understand the grief a parent goes through who has lost a child. This movie was a very light hearted movie and the silliness of Diane Keaton was a slap in the face to parents who have buried a child. It was VERY unrealistic from start to stop. I had a few calls after the movie, each call the same, "That was so off the mark and made it appear that in a short time you are back on the road and listening to songs on the radio and life is back" What a bunch of bull! It is clear that the director and Keaton have never lost a child because neither would have EVER made the movie to be so off the mark. I guess that's Hollywood.
moonspinner55
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.
edwagreen
**1/2 for this Diane Keaton farce.Someone should tell Ms. Keaton, enough with your Annie Hall philosophy and hats.This flick is just too much as Keaton's daughter, Sara, dies in a traffic accident, while her boyfriend survives.Keaton, who could not be reached by phone at first, as she was in the sack with her pal and had pulled out the phone plug, grieves in a new way for grievers.She retreats to the summer locale where all of Sara's friends are staying. She cleans the house, sleeps for two days and then begins to reveal things which were better not to be revealed. It appears that sweet Sara slept with her girlfriend and the guy who ultimately married the latter. In addition, she had an abortion thanks to this guy. We're all now put on this guilt trip.Her only hope is to find the elusive diary that Sara kept. She also hopes that boyfriend,Adam, who is a playwright, will not include all this in another play.When the diary is found, it has been written in Japanese. Sara had a Ph.D in this language. It's not that great news for mom when an excerpt of the diary is translated by a Japanese cook in a Japanese restaurant.Naturally, everything seems to tie up nicely in the end. The title of this shmaltz comes from The Wizard of Oz. Every time mom and Sara would speak, they would both utter Surrender Dorothy.As if this isn't enough, during the course of this bizarre extravaganza of mourning, Keaton tells Adam not to be another Woody Allen in his film, Interiors, where he tried to successfully emulate Ingmar Bergman. Ms. Keaton also tries drugs with the group. Come on, folks, can we realistically believe that anyone in his right mind could mourn like this? Fair to mediocre best sums up this film.