Full Review

"Henry Poole is Here" (Overture) is a moving fable about a depressed loner (Luke Wilson) who buys a rundown suburban home, and after some intervention – both human and divine – ends up with a new lease on life.

When realtor Meg Wyatt (Cheryl Hines) shows him a house that plainly needs work, she’s surprised that he’s willing to buy at the asking price. Once he moves in, he’s indifferent to fixing up the place. He won’t be there for long, he tells her. But we don’t know why.
           
For now, he’s content to drink himself into a stupor with the shades drawn. But his solitary, alcoholic existence is disrupted when Esperanza (Adriana Barraza), his warmhearted busybody neighbor, pushes her way into his life, starting with a welcoming plate of tamales.
 
He’s reluctantly tolerant of her ministrations, but loses patience with her when she suddenly discerns a miraculous image of Christ’s face on his stucco wall. Henry insists it’s only a water stain, and shoos her off his property, but Esperanza is persistent, eventually showing up with the local priest Father Salazar (George Lopez in a straight role) in tow.

Before long, to Henry’s intense discomfort, the entire neighborhood descends on his backyard lured by the miraculous properties some now claim the image possesses.

Henry’s neighbor on the other side is single mother Dawn (Rahda Mitchell) whose young daughter Millie (Morgan Lily) has not spoken since her father left them a year earlier. The solitary Millie lives in her own world with, paradoxically, a tape recorder her most treasured toy, by which she tapes other people’s conversations. Henry soon develops a romantic but platonic relationship with Dawn, initiated by his concern for sad Millie with whom he seems to empathize.

Patience (Rachel Seiferth) is another local fixture, a persistent nearsighted grocery clerk who, observing his liquor consumption, compassionately presses for an explanation.

Throughout it all, Henry remains devoid of faith and skeptical despite the drop of blood that now hangs on the “face.” He refuses to touch the wall, even when it appears he could well use a miracle. He tries to paint over the image, but to no avail. (As if to underscore his disdain for religion, he even utters a couple of profanities.)

Despite some formulaic turns and occasional platitudinous dialogue in Albert Torres’ script, and an overall leisurely pace, director Mark Pellington sustains a suspenseful, sometimes poetic, generally unsentimental mood, not without humor. The story stays just a bit ahead of predictable, at least until the end.

The circumstances of Pellington taking on this project are particularly poignant, as the director of “Arlington Road” was attracted to the uplifting script after his wife’s sudden death in 2004.

All the performances are winning, starting with Barraza who follows up her memorable turn in “Babel” where she played the baby-sitter who comes to grief at the Mexican border. Mitchell generates requisite warmth and compassion, and Lily’s a charmer. But it’s Wilson who solidly anchors the film, and whose transformation from spiritual emptiness, with Henry’s hurt palpable, to renewed hope is fully believable.
 
This little gem of a film with its truthful emotions, likable characters, and themes of faith and community concern (even when Henry commits a desperate act) should resonate warmly with Catholic viewers.

Movies have been evaluated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop's Office for Film and Broadcasting according to artistic merit and moral suitability. The reviews include the USCCB rating, the Motion Picture Association of America rating, and a brief synopsis of the movie.

The classifications are as follows:

• A-I -- general patronage;
• A-II -- adults and adolescents;
• A-III -- adults;
• A-IV**
• L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L replaces the previous classification, A-IV.
• O -- morally offensive.