text: **** Possible Spoiler **** <br /><br />If you were making a serious movie involving a powerful, but aging father with three apparently ungrateful daughters, featuring actors of the highest caliber, with great cinematography and a beautiful Midwestern setting, now where would you go with it? Why, you'd fashion a modern tragedy after "King Lear" of course.<br /><br />That's what I was expecting. That certainly wasn't what I got. What I got was 105 minutes of feminist tripe--one long harangue about man's inhumanity to woman. Why, there wasn't a decent male in the entire story.<br /><br />You see early on where this film might be headed, but you can't believe anyone would waste all these fine actors and craftsmen on that trite scenario--you just want them to get on with the King Lear theme. But it never happens; and there's the real tragedy if you ask me.<br /><br />Aside from the panorama of glorious rural heartland, about the only thing worth watching in this film was that wonderful chameleon, British actor Colin Firth, practicing his Midwestern accent. Now there was a treat.<br /><br />3/10