Rating: PG
Genre:
Comedy Drama
Release Date: 04/19/2005
SubTitles: English/Espanol
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD5.1/DDS/DTS
Run Time: 107 Minutes
Flags: Adult Situations, Suitable for Children
Distributor/Studio: New Line Home Video
Based on the novel by
Truman Capote, this often-witty
coming-of-age drama looks at a young man growing up with an unusual family in the Deep South in the 1940s. After the death of his parents,
Collin Fenwick (
Edward Furlong) finds himself living in a small town with two of his aunts,
Dolly (
Piper Laurie) and
Verena (
Sissy Spacek).
Verena is the more stable of the two, an entrepreneur who controls a number of local businesses and rules the roost with a firm hand.
Dolly, on the other hand, is a gentle eccentric who claims to hear the voices of the dead as the wind whistles through the grass, and has developed a homemade concoction that supposedly cures dropsy.
Dolly's potion attracts the attention of
Morris Ritz (
Jack Lemmon), a smooth-talking con man from Chicago who wants to snatch the formula away from her. Along the way,
Collin also gets to know
Catherine (
Nell Carter),
Verena and
Dolly's quick-witted house maid;
Amos (
Roddy McDowall), a barber who is also the town's one-man rumor mill;
Charlie Cool (
Walter Matthau), a charmingly cynical retired judge with an opinion about everything; and
Sister Ida (
Mary Steenburgen), an accordion-toting traveling evangelist who has had a heroic brood of 13 children without benefit of marriage.
The Grass Harp was directed by
Charles Matthau, the son of
Walter Matthau.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide