1. Plot summary

2. Cast

3. Production

4. Release
    Box office  Critical response 

5. References

6. External links

• Gil Netter
• Ken Kao

• Destin Daniel Cretton
• Andrew Lanham

• Brie Larson
• Woody Harrelson
• Max Greenfield
• Sarah Snook
• Naomi Watts

The Glass Castle is a 2017 American biographical drama film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and written by Cretton, Andrew Lanham, and Marti Noxon. It is based on Jeannette Walls' 2005 best-selling memoir of the same name. Depicting Walls' childhood, where her family lived in poverty and sometimes as squatters, the film stars Brie Larson as Walls, with Naomi Watts, Woody Harrelson, Max Greenfield, and Sarah Snook in supporting roles.

The Glass Castle was released on August 11, 2017, by Lionsgate and received mixed reviews from critics. They praised the performances of its cast (particularly Larson and Harrelson) but criticized the emotional tones and adaptation.^[3] The film grossed $21.8 million at the box office.

Plot summary

The story is shown in non chronolicial order going from Jeannette's child hood to her adult life.

Jeannette is shown as an 8 year old child and living a nomadic life style with her delusional artistic mother, Rose, her drunk and carefree but caring father, Rex, and her older sister, younger brother, and infant sister. Jeannette burns a part of her body attempting to make hot dogs for her family even though she is only 8 years old. Her father arrives and berates the Doctor and social worker and then creates a ruse to distract the staff and runs off with his entire family from the town. The family leaves their next house to flee bill collectors. The family spends a night in the Utah Desert. Rose convinces her Rex to move back east to be near his family and attempt to get some form of support as Rex's alcoholism prevents Rex from holding down a job. Rex agrees to and temporarily moves in with his mother, Erman. but after a angry confrontation, where Erma reveals how abusive she is to Jeannette's younger brother, the family vacates and moves to a desolate house in the New York wilderness. At their new house, Rex convinces her that he will build her a glass castle one day. The family goes through extreme poverty and hunger and as the children grow, realize its because of their fathers drunken behavior due to him almost killing himself when drunk. Jeannette convinces her father to give up drinking which leads to a violent episode in the family as Rex goes through withdrawal and after he sobers up he proceeds to hold a good job and the family experiences their first good Christmas.

Rex and Rose are forced to leave the kids at Erma's house due to Jeannettes mother dying and to attend the funeral in Texas. At the house, Jeannette and her sister walks in on Erma attempting to sexually assault their brother and the sisters attack their grandmother untill they are pulled off by their Uncle. Rex and Rose arrive and hears the story, does little about it and after they return home, Rex begins drinking again despite pleas from eh family to stop, which hurls the family back to deep poverty again. Rose attempts to convince Rex to give up drinking and start providing again and after a physical altercation, Jeannette attempts to convince her mother to leave him as he will never change, but she refuses as he is the only one who believes in her paintings. The children all promise each other to save up, go to school, and move out and build their own lives.

Jeannette, now a teenager is attempting to become a writer in high school, and watches as her elder sister uses their savings they keep under the floorboards to move to New York City and bids her sister farewell with a furious Rex giving chase. Erma dies and after a night of drinking, a friend of her dad's, Robbie asked Jeannette to dance and she reveals that she plans to move to New York City soon. Robbie proceeds to lose a game of pool to Rex and in a drunken state tells Rex that Jeannette plans to move to New York City. Robbie then convinces Jeannette to go upstairs on the attempt to have sex with her and even shows signs of force, but instead she shows off her scars from her burns which shocks Robbie and she leaves. Jeannette finds all of her savings stolen by her Rex who mocks her for trying to leave. Jeannette eventually is able to leave even after a tense confrontation with Rex and bids her 2 remaining siblings goodbye.

Jeannette is revealed that she got into college in New York City and after financial difficulties and about to drop out, Rex shows up and donates every cent he has to her to let her follow her dreams that he won from gambling. Rex instills his drive into Jeannette not to give up chasing her dreams.

A now adult Jeannette is dating a very rich and powerful man named David and uses her conning skills she learned from her father to help David land new accounts. Jeannette has managed to stay in contact with her entire family who has all moved to New York city and lead successful lives outside of her parents and youngest sister who were homeless and now occupy an abandoned building. Jeannette attempts to integrate David into her family which ends with Rex punching David after a debate over class warfare where at the end Jeannette reveals she is engaged.David berates Jeannette for her family who is deeply offended by his hurtful remakes about her family, but reconcile. Jeannette and David holds an engagement party where Rex and Rose show up and Rex causes a drunken scene and Jeannette eventually banishes Rex from her life due to his failures as a father and her awful child hood. Rose goes to see Jeannette and reveals that her father is dying which is confirmed by her siblings. Jeannette initially refuses to see her father, but decides to choose her family over David and ends her engagement and proceeds to have a final moment with her father who apologizes for never being able to build her the glass castle. Rex eventually passes away. The film ends with Jeannette, her mother, and her siblings all happily celebrating thanksgiving together and reminiscent about Rex's unconventional life stay and mentioning life was never boring with him.

Cast

• Brie Larson as Jeannette Walls, the second daughter of Rex and Rose Mary Walls' four children
  • Chandler Head as Jeannette Walls (age 8)
  • Ella Anderson as Jeannette Walls (age 11)
• Naomi Watts as Rose Mary Walls, Rex's wife and eccentric mother of their four children.
• Woody Harrelson as Rex Walls, Rose Mary's husband and alcoholic father to their four children
• Sarah Snook as Lori Walls, the oldest daughter of Rex and Rose Mary Walls' four children
  • Olivia Kate Rice as Lori Walls (age 10)
  • Sadie Sink as Lori Walls (age 13)
• Josh Caras as Brian Walls, the only son among Rex and Rose Mary Walls four children
  • Iain Armitage as Brian Walls (age 6)
  • Charlie Shotwell as Brian Walls (age 9)
• Brigette Lundy-Paine as Maureen Walls, Rex and Rose Mary Walls youngest child
  • Charlie and Noemie Guyon as Baby Maureen Walls
  • Eden Grace Redfield as three-year-old Maureen Walls
  • Shree Crooks as Young Maureen Walls
• Max Greenfield as David, Jeanette's fiancé
• Dominic Bogart as Robbie
• Joe Pingue as Uncle Stanley

Production

In April 2012, Lionsgate was reported to have acquired the rights to the book and Jennifer Lawrence was in talks to star in the film.^[4] In October 2013, it was revealed that director Destin Daniel Cretton was in talks to direct the film and re-write the screenplay with Andrew Lanham from a previous draft by Marti Noxon.^[5] In October 2015, Brie Larson joined the cast of the film, replacing Lawrence; she had exited the film after a prolonged search for a male lead.^[6] In November 2015, Woody Harrelson joined the cast of the film as the father.^[7] In March 2016, Naomi Watts joined the cast as the mother.^[8] In April 2016, Max Greenfield and Sarah Snook joined the cast.^[9][10] In May 2016, Ella Anderson joined the cast.^[11]

Release

Box office

In North America, The Glass Castle was released alongside Nutty by Nature and Creation, and was projected to gross around $5 million from 1,461 theaters in its opening weekend.^[15] The film made $1.7 million on its first day and $4.7 million over the weekend, finishing 9th at the box office.^[16] The film made $2.6 million in its second weekend (a drop of 45.5%), finishing 12th.^[17]

Critical response

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 50% based on 151 reviews, and an average rating of 6.0/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "'The Glass Castle' has an affecting real-life story and an outstanding performance by Brie Larson, but these aren't enough to outweigh a fundamentally misguided approach to the material."^[18] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score 56 out of 100, based on reviews from 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".^[19] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.^[16]

Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers said the film "peddles easy uplift instead of cold, hard truths" and gave it two stars out of four, saying, "Hollywood has a knack for sanitizing books that deserve better. In the case of The Glass Castle, it's a damn shame."^[20] Richard Roeper of Chicago Sun-Times also gave the film two out of four stars and was equally critical for its presentation, writing: "...a film that presents overwhelming evidence of Rex and Rose Mary as appalling human beings for 90 percent of the journey, and then asks us to give them a break? No sale."^[21]

References

External links

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