Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Phillida Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

SnoopyStyle Quoyle (Kevin Spacey) is a meek man struggling in life after his domineering father. He falls for hard-partying Petal (Cate Blanchett) and they have daughter Bunny together. She sells the six-year old to illegal adoption for $6k and dies in a car crash with her boyfriend. Quoyle's father dies and his half-sister Agnis Hamm (Judi Dench) comes to steal his ashes. Quoyle decides to leave upstate New York to live in the ancestral Quoyle home in Newfoundland with Bunny. Despite being only an inksetter, local paper owner Jack Buggit (Scott Glenn) forces him to write the Shipping News and local car wrecks, real and fake. Tert Card (Pete Postlethwaite) is the hard editor. Beaufield Nutbeem (Rhys Ifans) and Billy Pretty (Gordon Pinsent) are fellow reporters. Quoyle falls for widowerer Wavey Prowse (Julianne Moore). Quoyle struggles to write in the morbid newspaper style until he writes about the Hitler boat. Jack gives him his own column.This is a story of pirates, outlandish tales, and shocking reveals of family traumas. The material is there for something with an unique voice. Kevin Spacey doesn't fit as the meek Quoyle. He's a great actor but he has to really act it up to be this much of a walkover. This movie struggles to find that appealing quirkiness out of these fascinating morbid tales.

phurface-480-80691 If you have time to kill and watch great actors deliver bad acting, watch it. With such names as Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Judi Dench, I was expecting a great drama. Instead I waste precious time when I could have been watching reruns of 3rd Rock From the Sun and LMAO! I should sue to get this time back. And I expected much more from AP. The dialogue from Moore, Dench and others at times was impossible to discern what was being said. Maybe I should watch it again with the closed-captioning turned on. I'm just so disappointed in KS from his past performances in 'American Beauty', '21', 'Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil', 'K-Pax'.

worldofgabby The novel "The Shipping News" caused quite a splash when it was published. I never read it. I remember hearing about a movie being made from the book, and then not hearing much more about it. Now I know why. The film is a queasy concoction of human depravity, despair, beautiful scenery, colorful stereotypical characters, and clairvoyance. Kevin Spacey and Julianne Moore, two of my favorite actors, perform as if they are on Thorazine, and Judy Dench hams it up shamelessly (to her credit, she deepens up a bit towards the end.) I began to feel displaced, as if I wound up in a cold climate when I expected to be in Macondo. Magical Realism very far afield. I suffered through the entire movie out of laziness and masochism, hoping that at least one of the characters would be put out of their misery at its end.

pc95 "The Shipping News" is a fairly good movie which starts out strongly, but about halfway through edges into TV drama territory in style. It's the sort of movie that becomes middle of the road despite good performances and here and there shows some solid photography. The problem at the core are the main characters, especially Spacey whose simpleton-type character wears pretty thin over the duration of the movie. Along with that is the run-of-mill romance with Julianne Moore's small town widow. Their development is rather unbelievable and uninteresting as well as Spacey's acting with his character's daughter at times OK, and at other times painful. The movie luckily has some fine supporting cast, particularly Rhys Ivans and the great Pete Postlethwaite as well as Judi Dench. Overall the movie isn't really a disappointment with some great seasonal appeal, but unfortunately runs long.