Get thee to the Hallmark channel!

I didn't like it.

It wasnt horrible but the mediocre treatment of Howard's life story is a little insulting. But that's Hollywood, right?

I understand it's through the eyes of this woman he knew. Nonetheless, the screenwriters, it seems, made little to no effort researching the man's work.

So what you get is an account of Howard, third hand, from a woman who didn't write about him until forty years after the events.

I came to this film expecting some of the fire from those stories he wrote to come through in his character on the screen. This is not how it was.

After enough of "girl" and "yarn", I was consistently reminded of George W. Bush every time D'onofrio opened his big dumb mouth. Generally, if you're poor, from the South, and have any kind of education, you try to avoid acting like that. I am all three and I know I do. This is why I don't wish to believe REH could ever seem as big a meathead as D'Onofrio does in this flick. It wasn't so much the content of the dialog but the delivery.

But as the ending of the film makes plain, this movie was not made for me but for Renee Zellweger and "Jesse Stone" fans. This is why there is the Hallmark channel. The true character of the writer, Howard, was never important, only the woman who loved that poor troubled man! WAH! Because, hey, he's dead!