The Good Lie (2014)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

One movie that was really good that may be the most underrated movie because it wasn't filled with with Hollywood drama and promotions was the movie "The Good Lie". Most African based type movies I have seen are always good. I love how this movie starts with a few guys born in Africa who try to advance together and try everything they can to get to America and live happily together. Especially about learning about their child hood in Africa they lost a friend who they thought was murdered long ago. I don't want to reiterate the entire movie, but I cried with the ending when they all found their friend they lost in Africa and the main character gave the friend his ticket so he could go to America with the others so he stayed in Africa where it turns out he would be happier in the first place as a doctor. All in all, I loved this movie absolutely 10 out of 10

The film is in 3 parts. The first part follows the Sudanese children who have lost everything and are seeking safety.The second part is a gentle but well-observed satire, marking the absolutely typical inhumanity and su-bnormality of many Americans who have never even left the state they were born in, their utter lack of any understanding of another culture, much less how strange everything is for these refugees from a very different world. Culture shock is completely ignored.A tiny example is the jello presented to the 3 brothers on their arrival at their final destination in weird and alien Kansas. (Yes, that is how it seems to the rest of the world! The world outside Northern America, which barely exists so far as most Americans are concerned!) The well-meaning volunteer intends it as a welcome token but the brothers don't even recognise it as food! (And of course part of the satire is that it isn't.)The last third is partly a redemption of some Americans who find ways around the legal craziness that has swamped the US, which denies it has any involvement itself in terrorism, except as victim. It is also partly about love and sacrifice.A bittersweet and at the same time a heartwarming gem of a film.

Reese Witherspoon has had quite the year in 2014. She will probably be nominated for an Oscar for her work in 'Wild', but earlier this year, she starred in yet another film based on a true story called 'The Good Lie', which focused on the orphaned Sudanese children from South Africa, known as the Lost Boys, who came to America to start over and have a chance at a good life. Director Philippe Falardeau (who hasn't done much) directed from a script from Margaret Nagle (Boardwalk Empire) this sweet film that is mostly enjoyable, but never quite hikes over that mountain.Maybe the reason is that this film is full of those usual emotional big moments that are full of cheese that you can't help but laugh when you should be shedding a tear. And this happens so often that it becomes more of a problem rather than an emotional journey. If producers Brian Grazer and Ron Howard were on-set producers through the whole shoot, I'm sure things would have been handled differently. 'The Good Lie' follows four friends, Mamere (Arnold Oceng), Paul (Emmanuel Jal), Abital (Kuoth Wiel), and Jeremiah (Ger Duany), who were dealt a very bad hand growing up in their Sudanese village.During the turmoil and war over there, these four kids were forced out of their homes along with thousands of other kids to walk thousands of miles in search of another home without the help from adults. These kids ended up in a refugee camp, which was not so good to put it lightly. While there for a a number years, they grew up, however America stepped in and allowed for some of these lost people to come to America to have a better life. Three of the four kids were all located to Kansas City, although the movie was shot in Atlanta, where Carrie (Reese Witherspoon), a fiery young woman starts to look after and help these "lost boys" transition into the American life.From here, Witherspoon takes center stage as she struggles with dealing with this new aspect of her life. While she seems bothered at first by these four guys, the usual cheesy melodramatic plot points turn her into the woman with the heart of gold. It's just something that we've seen done a million times before, and here, it has a high cheese factor in certain moments. That being said, there are some great characters with some very funny moments throughout. And even though the story has more than enough big dramatic emotional moments that stink of cheese, for the most part, the film is satisfying to a certain degree.The sudanese actors are all excellent here and do a good job showing the emotional stress their characters went through and what their struggling with by being in America and away from their homeland. Witherspoon also turns in a great performance, but it seems a tiny bit over-the-top. And Corey Stoll (House of Cards) steals every scene he's in. 'The Good Lie' isn't the most powerful film to tell this story we've seen before, but it should satisfy the family friendly crowd.

This film did not have a theatre release here in my country, it came out on DVD today. I had seen the trailer and was looking forward to it. I had read several comments criticising the film for being about white people heroically and selflessly saving the black people. Even the IMDb web page says "their encounter with an employment agency counsellor forever changes all of their lives." Reese Witherspoon is the star attraction so people will notice the film, but she is not the main character of the story, her's is a supporting role, which she does well. If anything the encounter with the Sudanese refugees changes her character's life forever. On an emotional level the film is deeply affecting. The employment agency agent or the charity representative would have had more depth and connection if one or the other was played by an American woman of African descent. There is a tribal link between white Americans and Sudanese people but it is so far back as to be far beyond the longest oral tradition. I guess it was contrast rather than convergence the film maker wanted- their choice.The brutality of the war in Sudan is not graphically portrayed as violence often is in modern films. Graphic violence has a tendency to shut down the viewers empathy- a defensive measure I suppose. Without plastic guts and synthetic gore to be shocked at and to immunise us from the pain of others, the viewer starts to care about the family and their ordeal. I started seriously leaking water at one point, and kept springing leaks at numerous points thereafter. As a male, I do this very very rarely, and watching films, at most brim a bit, I never ever suffer rivulets down cheeks until now. I needed tissues. Tissues! The fish out of water comedy was gentle and the characters were not made out as ignorant or gullible, but eager and quick to learn. What they have to learn from first world culture is superficial however, just like the culture. More important is what they have to teach us first worlders. But to learn first you have to acknowledge there is something you can learn from uneducated poor people from a third world country. I think the film makers did just that.