DEAR FRANKIE

Everyone knows that I'm a sucker when it comes to crying at movies. I'm so weak that I even cry at movies that I hate, movies that don't deserve my waterworks. Shamefully manipulative movies like Beaches, where I angrily wipe away my tears at the end, and shake my fist at the screen, bellowing, "You SUCK!" then grumble, "Crappy-ass movie..."

But then, every now and then a GOOD sniffly movie comes along—one of those movies where as soon as you dry your face, something else comes along that causes another tear to sneak out of the corner of your eye. Dear Frankie is a movie like that. It is a little, non-Hollywood movie that never makes you feel cheap for crying. It is a movie about everyday people with everyday problems. It (thankfully) doesn't resort to a Hollywood ending, even though all signs could have pointed that way. Let's just say, Dear Frankie is a nice, sweet, and often wrenchingly sad little gem of a movie.

Lizzie (Emily Mortimer) is a single mom, always on the move with her precocious 9-year old son Frankie (Jack McElhone, who is never obnoxious), and her mother (Mary Riggans). At the start of the film, they have just moved to Glasgow, and it becomes clear that Lizzie, at one point, had left Frankie's father (for reasons which slowly unfold) and does not wish to be found.

As Frankie (who is deaf by the way—a character trait which refreshingly is played as matter-of-fact) doesn't remember his dad, Lizzie pretends that he is a sailor that is contantly out at sea. But Lizzie is stuck in a quandry when she finds out that his dad's boat, which she had made up by choosing a name, actually exists and is coming into port. Frankie wants to meet his father.

Lizzie hires a complete stranger (Gerard Butler) to portray her son's father for the weekend. No past, no questions, no name needed. She wants to know nothing about him. She is desperate to keep up the ruse for her son, who idolizes his missing father. Of course it turns out that the stranger is rugged and handsome, and, best of all, extremely kind to Frankie (start crying again).

With a plot like this, the film could have SO easily become schmaltz-o-rific, but Dear Frankie deftly avoids that. The people have flaws and aren't movie stars (I imagine it being remade with J.Lo as the single mom, and Richard Gere as the handsome, sensitive stranger... blech!). And this is why it works. These are not-perfect people in a not-perfect world, but they deserve to find a little happiness. And so you weep.

Dear Frankie is a little movie, with a small story, in a non-glamorous corner of the world, with non-glamorous characters. And that's why I loved it. There's no shame in crying at this one.