(no spoilers in the following section) While the movie and characters are well constructed and an interesting story is told, it ultimately falls apart in a way the writers, directors and everyone involved should have known. Mistakes like these continue to be made and when the movies fail, those involved are somehow surprised. This movie barely broke 3 million dollars world wide. They failed to ask themselves "Who in this world goes to a movie saying 'i want to leave the theater depressed as heck'". The answer is 'Nobody'. News got around and nobody want to see this film.
(spoilers follow from here, though not super specific) This movie had a path to greatness and the writers ignored it. They opted for a depressing movie, once they change gears from happy to sad, The mother blackmails the son into leaving his G/f, She gets committed and gets shock therapy and no longer seems to be... 'alive', (she lost her spark), he gets kicked out of school because the principal is a horrible person who hates atheists(violating the law in doing so) and then he dies in the Korean war because hes not in school. Its like they thought "hay how could we make this as sad as possible? how could we ruin a great movie and loving relationships?"
(spoilers follow from here, though not super specific) This movie had a path to greatness and the writers ignored it. They opted for a depressing movie, once they change gears from happy to sad, The mother blackmails the son into leaving his G/f, She gets committed and gets shock therapy and no longer seems to be... 'alive', (she lost her spark), he gets kicked out of school because the principal is a horrible person who hates atheists(violating the law in doing so) and then he dies in the Korean war because hes not in school. Its like they thought "hay how could we make this as sad as possible? how could we ruin a great movie and loving relationships?"