Claysaba
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
Intcatinfo
A Masterpiece!
Lollivan
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
soccerbeast-89913
From the very start of the movie, I was completely indulged in the story. I felt as though I was a member of the Odone family. The story was perfectly paced and kept the viewer constantly engaged in all that was taking place. The movie did a great job making you, the viewer, feel as though you were in the given situations, both good and bad.The acting in this film was outstanding. Both Sarandon and Nolte were incredible. The love they showed for their son, Lorenzo, was special. I found the acting of young Lorenzo, Zack O'Malley Greenburg, to be especially superb. To be given the task of playing a boy with ALD cannot be easy and he portrayed it effortlessly at such a young age. This film has moments of joy and moments that pull at your heartstrings. It is a movie that everyone should see within their lifetime because it is truly inspirational and powerful! I have tremendous amounts of respect for the real Odone family.
TheOguysReviews
Lorenzo's Oil (I gotta finda a cure for mya boy!) (1992)In 1984, Lorenzo Odone was diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD,) in which enzymes that break down saturated fats are defective, and which severely affects myelin in the central nervous system. This resulted in the immediate commitment of his parents, Augusto and Michaela, to find a credible cure for the otherwise fatal disease.The story is the basic retelling of the events, with the occasionally added personal strife's of the parents, who's accuracy has been neither confirmed of denied by the real Augusto or Michaela. The plot has a quite generic outline, but boasts a more or less true story of a boy's disease that is not bombarded with other unnecessary sub-plots, which makes the effort quite admirable. However, there is the sub-plot were we see the physical and emotional decline of Michaela, but this is necessary to the story process because it provides us with good character development for Michaela and Augusto and gives us more insight on what they comprehend throughout the trial. By far the greatest thing about the film is the incredible knowledge of what it's subject matters are. The film takes with great precaution to explain to the viewer each and every procedure they try to the vocabulary that they learned, and exactly how they manage to devise the concoction of "Lorenzo's oil." However, I find aspects like the main antagonistic characters and some of the story to be crammed in the space of 110 minutes. The antagonists of the film seem to fall into the cliché of being overly arrogant and dismissive towards the underdog protagonists who try to help the cause, examples of this shows in the scenes of the APD parent meetings, where the board is unwilling to accept change unless doctoral consensus is advised. Plus there are some scenes at the end that were rushed because of time, we go from age 10 to 14 in only ten minutes, and rushes the progress of the recovery. Now the acting is also impressive, but sometimes can be unintentionally comical. To start off, Susan Surandon is impeccable as the mother, she really puts all of her effort into this role and she pulled off the vigilant motherly character with ease; you could honestly believe she that she genuinely cared for the actor playing Lorenzo. Then we find ourselves with Nick Nolte as the Italian-American father, Augusto. (sigh) Although his effort is noble, you should probably never hire a person from Omaha to play an Italian with a full-on accent. Now granted his performance is not terrible, but there were moments where I had to chuckle under my breath. In conclusion, Lorenzo's Oil is a flawed, but nevertheless enjoyable depiction of the journey to find the "impossible" cure. "Lorenzo's Oil" is a pretty good film, no masterpiece, but decent.See Full review at theoguyproductions@blogspot.com
jjnxn-1
Emotionally harrowing film of a dedicated and persistent couples struggle to find help for their son when he falls victim to a terminal illness. Their single minded quest to find if not a solution at least something to relieve their child's suffering is inspiring.Intensely real performance by Susan Sarandon and a strong one from Nick Nolte although his accent while accurate for the character makes it difficult to understand him occasionally. Beautifully true supporting performances from Peter Ustinov. Margo Martindale and others but it is hard to watch what Lorenzo has to go through. A shattering experience at times but worthwhile.
dbdumonteil
It's impossible to remain indifferent to this family's sufferings .Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte -in spite of his fake Italian accent- give superlative performances.That moment when Nolte is crying in his stairs is one of the most harrowing desperate scene I have ever seen.What's really extraordinary is that we do not always side with the parents.Sometimes ,we think they are monsters to carry on a pointless fight.Sometimes we think that maybe the nurse who reads the fairy tale as if she were reading grocery's lists might be right.Two people who did not know anything about biology (aside from what we learn in high school)and who become capable of arguing against leading medical experts after studying books night after night deserve our undivided attention."Laurenzo" is not an easy movie to watch;it's not what you would call "entertaining".For this family,the famous sentence " life is a daily struggle" takes on a terrible meaning.Recommended.
