After finishing Mitch Albom's best-selling book "For One More Day," I thought to myself, "Well, the movie has to be better than this."
It is.
Albom, of course, combines sentimentality and sports with platitudes about the interconnectedness of all people and the need for us to share love with others. His books move some people deeply.
"Oprah Winfrey Presents: Mitch Albom's 'For One More Day' "
"- When: 9 p.m. Sunday on ABC.
- Starring: Michael Imperioli, Ellen Burstyn.
He followed the tear-jerking 1998 best seller "Tuesdays with Morrie" with "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" (2003), which this reader considered to be a huge letdown, and the 2006 book "For One More Day," which continued the downward spiral.
Albom's writing inspires some of us to get in touch with our inner cynics. The prose is awkward, the plots are cloying, and Albom's slender books, at expensive prices, are making someone very rich.
In the movie of "For One More Day" (9 p.m. Sunday, WTAE), Michael Imperioli (who played Christopher Moltisanti on HBO's "The Sopranos") plays Charley Benetto, an alcoholic, suicidal former baseball player who almost kills himself in a wreckless automobile accident not far from his childhood home.
Miraculously, he meets his mother, Posey Benetto (Ellen Burstyn), who had died years before. In the day they spend together, Posey shows Charley the way to redemption.
A sample of the dialogue:
Charley: "You can't be here."
Posey: "Why?"
Charley: "Because you died."
Posey: "Oh, Charley. You make too much of things."
We learn that Posey, a former nurse, made extraordinary sacrifices to put her children through school, and as she puts it, "You do whatever you have to do to keep your family together, and there is nothing ordinary about it." Need I mention that there's a happy ending involving more miracles?
Because Imperioli and Burstyn give performances far superior to the material, the movie plays much better than the book reads. (Albom also wrote the teleplay.) Imperioli's 6-year-old son, Vadim, plays Charley as a child, Samantha Mathis plays Posey as a young woman, and the two of them morph gracefully into their older characters.
Burstyn, an Oscar winner for "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (1974), will celebrate her 75th birthday tomorrow, and she looks wonderful. We can applaud her for not getting her skin pulled so tight that she's unrecognizable.
If we can watch television in heaven, "For One More Day" isn't likely one of the five movies we'll be watching there, but it's watchable nevertheless.
First Published: December 6, 2007, 10:00 a.m.
