SHERRYBABY

SherryBaby is a sincere, earnest, sometimes gritty, sometimes tense, yet still romanticized story of a mother, once in jail for stealing to support her heroin addiction, trying to make a new life for herself.

It is extremely well acted by Maggie Gyllenhaal. And the supporting actors are all excellent as well.

It is an effective drama.

The only reserve I had was that -- despite all the excellence of her terrific portrayal of this deeply disturbed woman -- she still often looked way too beautiful for the character. For example, not only did she seem totally out of place at an addicts meeting, but no-one around her reacted realistically to the movie-star presence of this erotically charged woman. Two men hovered lightly around her, the way they might have, had she looked like the character she was playing probably would have looked. They were not, however, behaving like people behave in the presence of someone who truly does look like a movie star. She looked tense and stressed when the dialog called for it; but for a truly great movie she would have needed to look like an ex-junkie, ex-con, sex-starved, disturbed, strugging woman all the time.