Anywhere But Here Reviews

Ever since I saw ‘Smoke’, I have been closely following Wayne Wang’s career. Unfortunately, none of his other movies reached this level of awesomeness (‘The Joy Luck Club’ was still very damned good though) but some of his other features were certainly decent and this movie was certainly one of those. The major point of interest was to have Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman together in one movie and, apparently, Susan Sarandon made clear that she wouldn’t do this movie if Natalie Portman was not cast as her daughter. At the time, Portman was just starting, she wasn’t an Academy award winner, she didn’t do the prequel Star Wars trilogy yet but, pretty much like the rest of us, Susan Sarandon was able to feel the tremendous potential displayed by Portman and nobody could blame her for her choice. Eventually, the plot was nothing really amazing, it was actually rather pedestrian and predictable but what was more interesting was the relationship between this mother and her daughter and how well handled it was by the two actresses. Anyway, to conclude, even though it is nothing really great, it is still a decent drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Susan Sarandon or Natalie Portman.