How to Make an American Quilt. - movie reviews

National Review, Oct 23, 1995 by John Simon

How wrong I was to believe I had plumbed the depths of terminal cuteness in a number of slobberingly sentimental films Hollywood has churned out lately along with its more violent fare. What I mistook for the bottom proves merely the diving board from which How to Make an American Quilt hurtles into yet more deeply depraved emotional slatternliness that piles soggy platitude on platitude for nearly two mind-dissolving hours.

The framework here is a quilting bee during which a handful of old and middle-aged quilters take turns spilling out to the young heroine (Winona Ryder, and insufferable) their mostly miserable pasts and presents, ostensibly to help her choose wisely between a solid fiance and a reckless lover. Stereotypical feuds, infidelities, self-sacrifices are banally heaped one upon another, often in duplicate as we hear the stories first from the now older women, then see them re-enacted by their younger selves. With ever-increasing histrionics, plot, character, and diction vie with one another in dimestore bathos. Jocelyn Moorhouse's disgusting direction wallows in this seemingly endless concatenation of attitudinizing cliches, dragging even the able cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Schindler's List) down into flagrant picture-postcardiness, condignly matched by Thomas Newman's treacly score.

A huge cast, quite a few of them famous, make fools of themselves in actions and dialogue by Jane Anderson, one of America's worst playwrights, from a novel by Whitney Otto that makes Harlequin Romances look like Henry James. I allow for critical disagreement in most matters, but must declare anyone with the slightest use for this abomination beyond the pale of civilized discourse.