Fresh
Like the main character, it's stodgy and didactic -- and full of grace and surprises.
Lisa Alspector, Chicago Reader
Overview
After being denied a promotion at the university where she teaches, Doctor Lily Penleric, a brilliant musicologist, impulsively visits her sister, who runs a struggling rural school in Appalachia. There she stumbles upon the discovery of her life - a treasure trove of ancient Scots-Irish ballads, songs that have been handed down from generation to generation, preserved intact by the seclusion of the mountains. With the goal of securing her promotion, Lily ventures into the most isolated areas of the mountains to collect the songs and finds herself increasingly enchanted.
Director and cast
- Maggie Greenwald Director
- Janet McTeer as Professor Lily Penleric, PhD
- Michael Davis as Dean Arthur Pembroke
- Michael Goodwin as Professor Wallace Aldrich, PhD
- Gregory Russell Cook as Fate Honeycutt
- Jane Adams as Eleanor 'Elna' Penleric
- E. Katherine Kerr as Harriet Tolliver
- Emmy Rossum as Deladis Slocumb
- Pat Carroll as Viney Butler
- Stephanie Roth Haberle as Alice Kincaid
- Aidan Quinn as Tom Bledsoe
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
74%
Tomatometer
Fresh
Songcatcher unfolds at a leisurely but enjoyable pace, its dramatic contrivances never pushed too hard by director Maggie Greenwald.
Dennis Harvey, Variety
Rotten
No matter how purely sung, the music keeps getting lost in the melodrama.
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail
Fresh
A wonderfully crafted movie in a minor key.
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
Fresh
Tall, big-boned Janet McTeer ... is the ideal actress to play Lily Penleric.
Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle
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