Ìý User Rating 
A slick, enjoyable, feelgood pic, Lasse Hallström's follow-up to the sickly-sweet "Chocolat" is another middle-of-the-road audience-pleaser.
Nothing here will shock, challenge, or even vaguely surprise you, but just as staple foods can sometimes be enjoyable, so this easy-to-digest, gently amusing drama is a pleasant way to fritter away a couple of hours.
Kevin Spacey is Quoyle (he doesn't get a first name), an unfortunate chump who, within about five minutes, is screwed and screwed over by Cate Blanchett's patented poor white tramp. He's then sacked, orphaned, and left to bring up their daughter on his tod.
Enter Aunty Judi Dench, doing her dignified mother-figure schtick, to help him up sticks and move to the ancestral home in Newfoundland - where everyone talks a bit funny, the landscapes are photogenically bleak, and poor neglected widows look like Julianne Moore.
Not a bad place to raise a child, become a journalist, and transform from moribund loser to plucky people's champion, with the aid of the lovably eccentric locals: Scott Glenn's gruff newspaper editor, Pete Postlethwaite's pernicious sub-editor, and Rhys Ifans' globetrotting Englishman.
With fine performances throughout (Spacey is somewhat mannered, but the material's hardly a stretch) and a script ripe with witty dialogue, there's much to like in screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs' adaptation of Annie Proulx's novel.
The pity is he doesn't dwell enough on the thoroughly likable characters (the newspaper office scenes are a treat), opting instead to clip mechanically through the less-than-diverting plot.
The story isn't helped by having Hallström at the helm. He clearly has a knack of drawing out good performances, but he has a dour approach to narrative pacing: removing all dramatic peaks by making everything look and sound the same - shooting a bodyless head the same as he does children playing. The result is mildly engaging, but never moving.
