Nora Roberts' Tribute (2009)

Sick Product of a Sick System

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I have been a big fan of Nora Roberts for many years. When I hear that some of her books were being turned into movies, I was very happy. I have seen the first four movies that had the same treatment and was expecting the same quality entertainment this time around.I was very happy with the other three movies in this set. Northern Lights, Midnight Bayou, and High Noon met and sometimes even exceeded my expectations. It was only with Tribute that they fell short. It mostly had to do with the casting of Brittany Murphy in the role of Cilla.In the book, Cilla is assertive, active, knowledgeable about all aspects of remodeling the house and physically capable of handling any part of the remodel. Ms. Murphy manages to pull off being assertive, active, and knowledgeable but she really misses on the physical aspect. Just watching her swing a sledge hammer makes me cringe. She swings it with little force and looks as if she's going to smash her foot at any moment. I am amazed that she didn't have an accident with the sledge while filming.All in all it was an okay movie but it's definitely my least favorite of the second four.

I like Brittany Murphy and this is the main reason I sought out this movie. She is good as Cilla McGowan, returning to her grandmother's former home in Virginia (filmed in the New Orleans area) to restore it and live in the area. Cilla had been a child star but realized her acting career was not gaining momentum, so she was instead going to make her living as a contractor, buying distressed properties and fixing them up for sale. In this movie she even studies for and passes her test to become a licensed contractor.Her grandmother had died some 35 years earlier, rules suicide, but some letter Cilla found in a secluded room made her begin to wonder if that was the whole story. And, did her grandmother really take her own life? As soon as Cilla makes her first venture outside with a maul in her hands, neighbor Jason Lewis as Ford Sawyer walks over. He is instantly smitten and spends the rest of the movie trying to gain Cilla's affections. It turns out that Steve is a fairly famous (in fan circles) author of fantasy graphic novels. Cilla comes just when he is developing a new character, and her looks and spunk become the role model for the new character.I would like to say this is a good movie but I can't. It plays out as a "B" movie. Many of the characters, and much of the dialog, don't come across as believable. Plus there are a couple of "red herring" incidents which have nothing to do with the actual story being told. It is sort of interesting, but ultimately not the best time spent watching a movie. By that I mean watching an old favorite again is probably better entertainment for most of us.MAJOR SPOILERS: As Cilla reads the unsigned letters she figures out that her grandmother had been pregnant, and because of the postmark must have been a local man. Strange things begin to happen, someone comes during the night to deface her remodeling project, her truck, etc. It finally turns out to be the wife of her grandmother's lover, who holds such a grudge against the family that she wants Cilla to leave. In the movie's climax the woman lures Cilla into the old home at night, drugs her, and plans to use a funnel and tube to kill her just as she had killed her grandmother 35 years earlier. Ford is at a party and realizes all this just in time to get to Cilla, saves her, and they decide to get married and live happily ever after.

Without Brittany Murphy, this film would probably be saccharin schmaltz. The story is kind of pedantic:Failed child star inherits a Virginia mansion from her grandmother, a two-time Oscar winner from the late 60s, early 70s, who died from an apparent suicide before Murphy's character was born.The plot includes some intrigues about her grandmother's secret affair with a mysterious married man....and she has to deal with bad feelings the townies have toward her family...and there's a lot of creaking and sneaking and lame scare tactics.All through this lame frame work of scenes...Brittany Murphy makes a silk purse out of a sows ear. She turns water into wine. She gives so much on screen with her realistic and edgy performance. I've watched this lame movie three times already, because Brittany Murphy is mesmerizing in this. She doesn't even have to say any lines, and you get what she's trying to communicate. Everything shows in her face and body language.Even when the killer is revealed, and the plot unravels into lame predictability...she still makes it work. I keep watching because I'm amazed that she makes this script sound organic, as though they weren't lines from a Lifetime Original Movie. She delivers as though she's actually thinking and feeling what is written on the page. I'm totally blown away...by Brittany Murphy...not by the film its self.

***SPOILERS*** Going back to her roots in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley former child movie star Cilla McGowan, Brittany Murphy, is determined to restore her grandmother's,the legendary Academy Award winning actress and singer, Janet Hardy (Tiffany Morgan) southern mansion. The place over the last thirty five years has gone to pot since Janet's tragic death-at age 38-back in the winter of 1971 from a massive overdose of barbiturates.It doesn't take long for Cilla to make enemies in town with the angry and a bit unstable-to say the least- Old Man Carl Hennessey, Wallace Merck, suspiciously snooping around her house. Hennessey later shows how very very unneighborly like he is by him spitting in Cilla's face when she confronted him about his very strange and bizarre actions. It turned out that Cilla's Uncle Johnnie was responsible-by driving drunk-in Carl's son-who was a passenger in Johnnie's car- ending up paralyzed from the neck down!There's also the fact that Janet was also having an affair with one of her neighbors that by Cilla uncovering his love letters, all unsigned, to her strongly hinted that she got pregnant by him! This may well have lead, in Janet's lover trying to save his marriage, to her murder not suicide as reported by the, back then in 1971, local coroner!Getting romantically involved with her next door-or next farm- neighbor Ford Sawyer, Jason Lewis, a local graphic designer Cilla soon becomes the target of some local lunatic who, like some half dozen others in town, has it in for her for what Cilla's family-or late Grandma Janet Hardy-actions did to him. It's this shadowy psycho who's constantly breaking into Cilla's now restored mansion,and wrecking the joint, while she's away mostly spending her nights at Ford's place. It soon becomes evident to the police that Old Man Hennessey isn't the person that's committing these property crimes and acts of terror since he's been locked up all the time that they've been happening to Cilla. Then who's the person committing them?As we all suspect, due to her very wild and anything goes lifestyle, the person driving poor Cilla's nuts has to be the man, or possibly his very jealous wife, whom Janet had an affair with just before her sudden and mysterious death! It's then that Cilla as well as her boyfriend Ford Sawyer realizes that it was that person who very possibly murdered Janet, and had it made to look like a suicide, and now in her getting close to the truth is going to do the very same thing to Cilla!