Walk The Line

Talk about being damned with faint praise -- the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line is receiving mostly twixt and between reviews that are not likely to spur even the late singer's fans to rush out over the weekend to see it. A. O. Scott in the New York Times calls it competently written but remarks that it offers more tribute than insight. Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe & Mail, while praising the performances of Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter, comments that while Johnny Cash was anything but conventional, the film ... is a conventional show-business romance and biography. Ann Hornaday remarks in the Washington Post: Unfortunately, for all its good music and admirable vocal impersonations, Walk the Line ... hews to the hoary conventions of an increasingly tired Hollywood staple. Boy nurtures nascent talent, boy suffers primal loss, boy meets girl, boy meets drugs, boy loses girl, boy kicks drugs, boy gets girl, boy is redeemed. On the other hand, Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times comes to the defense of those conventions, writing: Essentially this is the story of John and June and a lot of great music. And essentially that's the story we want. And Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News echoes that the movie may not be the most innovative musical biopic, but they sure ain't makin' love stories like this one anymore. Indeed, there are numerous raves for the movie. Mike Clark in USA Today comments that it goes from compelling to enthralling. And most of the critics credit the performances of Phoenix and Witherspoon. As Carina Chocano observes in the Los Angeles Times: Theirs are the kinds of performances the Academy Awards live to reward, comprising as they do a sort of acting decathlon. But the best thing about Phoenix and Witherspoon is their emotional connection, which carries the movie and transcends the material.