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Jim Sheridan’s In America, which he wrote with his daughters Naomi and Kirsten, is very loosely based on the Irish director’s experiences coming to New York with his family as a young man. At its best, the movie has a supernal glow that you can practically warm your hands by. Sheridan’s astonishment at this promised land is seen through the eyes of the daughters in the film, Christy and Ariel (the marvelous sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger), who experience contemporary Manhattan as a garden of unearthly delights. Their parents, Johnny and Sarah (well played by Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton), still mourning the accidental death of their young son, have lost their faith and are searching for a new one. A hard-luck actor, Johnny risks the rent money on the family’s tenement digs by trying to win a doll for his daughters at a carnival; he’s good-hearted but foundering, and Sarah is the one who must keep the family together.
Sheridan missteps when he introduces Mateo (played by Amistad’s Djimon Hounsou), who lives in the tenement and spends much of his time screaming to himself. He becomes a kind of storybook godfather to the two girls and a savior for their parents, but his presence is too furiously deranged for the fragile texture of this movie. He disrupts its lyricism. Understated works a lot better than overstated in In America. Fortunately, there are more than enough moments when the heavy-handedness gives way to the sheer bliss of ordinary magic.
(1 hr. 43 mins.; PG-13)— PETER RAINER
Opens November 26
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
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