Shadowlands
Director: Richard Attenborough
Year Released: 1993
Rating: 2.5
Attenborough's film of the real-life relationship between writer C.S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) and New Yawk woman Joy (Debra Winger) was critically-acclaimed when it came out and was considered one of the best films of the year. After seeing it I failed to come to the same conclusion. Hopkins' portrayal of Lewis is very good (is Hopkins ever bad?), but the story seems familiar - cold man meets 'warm' woman, falls in love, she dies, he gains new understanding about life. The fatal flaw with the film lies in Ms. Winger's character Joy: besides her New York accent which is present once scene and gone the next, she's hardly sympathetic or even likable in her role ... her and Hopkins have no chemistry together, and at the end of the film, when her character dies, it's not very impactful.
