Well-meant and sincerely performed, this is nonetheless what some would call a real snoozeroo. The scripts of this kind of film have to be amazingly good for them to hold the interest, and most of the dialogue here is moderate at best. It's packed with lines you've heard before - 'Maybe life's not supposed to make sense' - and lines that go too far - 'You're growing up like a weed' a 'kindly' neighbour tells the central character, a 14-year-old girl Dani (Reese Witherspoon) living in rural Louisiana of the Fifties. Dani falls heavily for the new boy at the waterhole, but a promising friendship is blunted when he claps eyes on her ravishing 17-year-old sister. The resultant triangle is resolved in melodramatic rather than sympathetic fashion, resulting in scenes poised somewhere between East Lynne and The Archers. Director Robert Mulligan has proved expert at warming up slices of Americana, but he has too little to cook on here. 'Call me if anything happens,' says Dani at one point. Viewers might be justified in lodging a similar request.

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