An uneven but ultimately worthy art comedy, Where the Heart is still never quite lives up to its broad ambition. It's somewhat of a damnation of eighties materialism and misplaced values in exchange for an alternative view that what we really have to value is each other. It also questions the meaning of family, the role it has in our lives, and how that has been sent askew by a conformist society.

Director Boorman tries to express these ideas not only through a plot that involves a wealthy industrialist losing all his material possessions only to discover that his real wealth comes from his family and friends, but also with a rather ambitious attempt to meld the style of the film to somehow represent this. In calling for an alternative way of looking at life, he rightfully approaches him film with an offbeat tone, but has only varying success with the endeavor. The film has a commercial sheen given to it, no doubt in order to please the studio (the film was actually originally set in London), but this has an uncomfortable mix with some of the quirky things Boorman injects into the piece.

Boorman at first struggles to find the right tone for his story. In what is seemingly an effort to create a sense of heightened reality, he instructs his actors to ham it up a treat, which only leads to a disjointed feeling. One scene where daughter Daphne meets up with homeless bum "the shit" pays off wonderfully though, with an air of old-fashioned movie making mixed into the very contemporary setting. Throughout the middle stages of the film however Boorman settles on a more straightforward tone and just tells the story, which makes for less awkward viewing and the film improves greatly. The script works fine on it's own merits and doesn't need over-direction. Later when Boorman again brings more fantastical elements into play during the last act they merge much more comfortably because by then he has built a solid base for them.

Importantly the large ensemble cast of about ten characters is handled very well. We get a really good sense of them all, with each actor getting their individual moments to shine. It's a great feat to effortlessly put ten or so characters in a scene and make them all feel important. The actors all do a good job, although a couple of early scenes fall deathly flat (blame Boorman).

The movie is beautifully filmed with lots of color and detail, but it's occasionally cursed by an ill-fitting (and now dated) synth soundtrack that pops up every now and then in amongst a more traditional classical score.

The theme of the film is always present, but is ultimately shown best in the change in Stewart. His goal was to give his children a dose of reality as he has come to see it, but instead he learns from them that what is really important in life, and where happiness comes from, is not material success, but the bonds we have with each other. The McBain family learns though that a little compromise with the societal structure of the world is still needed to reach where they want to be in this regard.

Where the Heart Is, is one of those movies that rewards repeated viewings because you pick up on all the little throw away lines and scenes that add to the movies theme. Despite the few flaws, Boorman's film is ultimately a very enjoyable experience with a nice message. Even if it is one of those messages that you tend to nod your head in approval at, then proceed to live your life exactly the same way you always had. Probably because most of us don't have a country mansion to retire too with all our friends.

Uma's performance very much mirrors the rest of the film. At first, no doubt under Boorman's direction, she's all over the place struggling to settle on a style. To begin with she reaches for a sort of old-fashioned panache, but only the aforementioned scene where she meets up with Christopher Plummer's homeless bum really pays off. Despite her technique actually being quite impressive, the style she adapts doesn't really fit into the movie, and is strangely off putting. I actually wonder if she was "doing" a young Elizabeth Taylor there at times.

Fortunately, not long into the film Uma settles on just playing the role fairly "straight", which is definitely the right thing to do. Daphne turns out to be a completely contemporary young woman. A flighty, idealistic, but totally impractical young thing with a strange fascination for magic. In Uma's hands Daphne is a very entertaining character, despite her slightly disjointed nature at times. More for individual moments of charm and humor than for overall resonance though.

She brings a giddy enthusiasm to her work, in what might actually be her funniest performance. Although seldom mentioned in articles, I also think Where the Heart is offers Uma at the peak (and end) of her nubile young starlet stage, which is more often associated with Dangerous Liaisons. She carries the youthful and hugely appealing sexiness of a great beauty who doesn't realise it yet. Her topless appearances several times throughout the film posing for sister Chloe's elaborate "people/paint illusions" epitomize this in stunning fashion.

Where the Heart Is fits nicely into Uma's oeuvre as the kind of offbeat and creative venture that she is so often drawn to. Despite being one of her most abject failures commercially it was a nice film for Uma to do early in her career.

"After I made "Hope and Glory" -- and that was an enjoyable experience -- I had the idea of taking another aspect of my own life and exploring it. This was very much about my own kids, and not only my own kids but their friends and other families. I wrote it with my daughter. It was originally set in London, and Disney said, "Well, would you transpose it to New York?" And we did that, a little reluctantly. But it was stimulating to do it that way. I think Francis Coppola once said all good films are about families [laughter]. Certainly ["Where the Heart Is"] was, and, of course, I think "The General" is to some extent. It's certainly about [Cahill's] enlarged family, in the sense of a tribe really.

Again it's an element of tribalism, and "Where the Heart Is" was about the ambiguity between discipline, the values that hold a family together and the notions that can pull it apart. And that's, I think, an interesting subject. I mean, what you're looking at today is disintegration of family. You can talk as much as you like about family values in a political sense, and the reason these politicians insist on this so much is because of the insecurity. Everyone's afraid of the way families are disintegrating now and nobody knows what replaces that or what they do about it. Everyone is aware of the misery and unhappiness that comes about through that, and yet it just seems to be inevitable somehow."

"In the last 11 years -- with "Hope and Glory" (1987), "Where the Heart Is" (1990), "Beyond Rangoon" (1995) and now "The General" -- the story of John Boorman's career is one of greatness realized. Though at times it's felt as if Boorman's greatness was being squandered: on the studios that dumped his movies, on the audiences who ignored them and on the critics who reviewed them so insipidly. But Boorman is one of the handful of working filmmakers who can legitimately be considered a giant of the medium."