Movie: The Letter Writer

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

Unrecognized Talent

Plot Overview

High schooler Maggy Fuller (Aley Under­wood) struggles with Algebra. At first it was easy. Her teacher Mr. Hanson (Matthew Flynn Bellows) started with arithmetic formulas of the form: a_n = a₁ + (n-1)d. He asks the students to lay out such a formula and give examples modeled by it. Maggy has befriended one Sam "Stan" Worthington (Bernie Diamond) at the Maple Hill Rest Home whose hobby is mailing out one hand­written letter a day to a name garnished from the phone book. His a₁ is 1, a first letter. Each day adds one more, a difference (d) of 1. So by the formula, day one has a total of one, day two ups it to two total, day three three, and so forth. Easy peasy. She could do it in her sleep. Fact is when her mother Nancy Fuller (Pam Eichner) wakes her saying she has ten minutes to get ready for school, Maggy doesn't panic. “I can get ready in five,” she tells her mom. Math is such a labor saving device.

Then the teacher moves on to geometric formulas of the type: y = a + bx + cx² + dx³ + …). Here Maggy (“I hate math”) starts to nod off in class, but her best friend Kim (Kylee Thurman) is a whiz at it. To her this is small potatoes.
Maggy sings in a band called The Threshold. Her total audience exposure “y” would be their local exposure “a”, plus a small coefficient “b” times their piddling record deal, plus a smaller coefficient “c” times their potential parties squared, plus a tiny one for small shows cubed, and so they work their way up to tours and such. At first the early coefficients a, b, etc. would dominate, but over time those exponents would give their expanding gigs more weight.

Maggie is out cold in class when the teacher gets to exponential functions. At this point the principal inter­venes for Maggy's “lack of focus,” and mother gets on her case for being “selfish and unreliable just like your father.” The teacher had been explaining that when a < 0 and b > 1, y = ab^x expresses negative exponential growth. He wants them to explain the difference between that and exponential decay. Exponential decay is former opera singer Stella's hearing loss. Negative exponential growth is a cancer child running up a debt for mom. The classic example of exponential growth is a population with unlimited resources and no check to it. Nancy's husband got a good settlement in their divorce. She got full custody, i.e. responsibility, of the children, and he made a “clean break” not having to pay support. He started right away with his new family and has four children, seen in a professional photo­graph, and one on the way. They live in a big house while Nancy and her two children reside in an upstairs flat. Her ex-husband is moving with his new brood cross-country for better opportunity. Super.

Kim suggests to Maggy that she can get better grades if she'll copy off her her friend. Yes, that seems to work, but on an easy multiple choice test identifying quadratic equations—they're very distinctive,—they score less than an expected 100% and both have the same wrong & right answers. Some­body was evidently cheating and Kim leaves Maggy holding the bag.

In a Ken Follett novel set in London, 1873, an unscrupulous cad Mickey coveted his friend Tonio's position at the bank. Mickey a cardsharp maneuvered Tonio into a game of baccarat in which Mickey held the bank, but he didn't use his skill to maximize his own winnings. “Mickey did not want to win: that was not his purpose tonight. He just wanted Tonio to lose” (149). When Tonio went bust, he had to self-deport opening the way for his “friend” to succeed him at his cushy job. Some­thing similar is going on here with these two friends, and we wait for the other shoe to drop.

Two Normal Distribution Curves

Mathe­ma­tician John Paulos tells us that stat­istic­ally, “Small diff­er­ences in the mean lead to large diff­er­ences at the extremes” (59–62.) The Fuller family is a little bolder than most. The dad seizes the oppor­tunity to move to where oppor­tunity awaits. The (first) mom shoulders single parenting (“It's compli­cated”) when the courts could have kept the dad more involved. The daughter performs on stage and just sucks it up when her trajectory doesn't pan out. The cancer kid takes his new treatment in stride when the earlier one didn't work. He invites Sam for milk & apple pie to thank him for his kind note. Sam wrote that the kid was the bravest person he knows. He can accurately read people from a distance so we figure this is right about the kid being a rare one.

Ideology

When I was in Bible school, we got up at a most inconvenient hour, put on a pot of joe, and as a group went over the wisdom books of the Bible. We'd eventually come to, (Prov. 11:25) “The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.”

Sam Worthington expounds to his newfound disciple Maggie: “There's a balance in all things. If you give, you will receive. If you give a lot, you'll be rich. It's magical! You see, life is like a mirror, if someone steals or is dishonest, they'll invite people into their lives who also steal and are dishonest. The good thing is you can choose who and what enters your life. Within every human being there is a God-given ability that if you find it and nurture it you'll be able to bless the lives of others.” That was every bit as good as other comments we would have heard in our discussion, and this movie goes on to illustrate the points.

Production Values

“” (TV Movie 2011) was written, directed, and produced by Christian Vuissa who also composed some of its music. It stars Aley Under­wood, Bernie Diamond and Pam Eichner. The actors did more or less okay, though it was obvious they weren't seasoned.

While lacking any­thing that could cause moral objection, this film was not officially rated. The music wasn't even too loud. Boy–girl relations could have been from an earlier era, and nobody drank coffee, much less some­thing stronger. It was patriotic displaying an American flag in the class­room and a liberty bell on a stamp. In a word it was Mormon-friendly. It was set in Colorado but shot in Utah.

The movie lacked the professional touch. The sound mix was bad. The writing was substandard: too stilted and clichéd. The camera work was a fixed lens or barely moving, with one fade out & fade in to liven things up—whoop de do! Back­ground was uninteresting. The cancer kid could have been sympathetic if they'd found one who knew how to act. A shaved head can only go so far. Runtime is 1 hour 25 minutes.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

Here is a good story of an unsung hero. School age Maggy befriends senior citizens, learns to play an instrument, and gets into her Bible to become a better person and into her textbook to do better in school. She finds her voice is more suited to hymns than to rock-'n'-roll.

Some churchmen never go to movies, and if they can some­how be persuaded to, it's likely they'll judge the experience by the way it compares to sermons as they're used to those. This movie might be more to their liking being wall-to-wall lectures. Maggy gets lectured by teacher, principal, mom and friend. She gets taught by an old guy with a unique hobby, and she receives encouragement from her sick kid brother. She receives a short-lived declaration of love from her musician boy­friend and hasty apologies from her absent father. An old guy and his lady friend give her good advice. While this faith-based picture doesn't fully capitalize on the potentials of the cellu­loid medium, it might provide a suitable transition for pew-sitters. Nerds can check the math.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Boringly mild adventure. Suitability for children: Suitable for all ages and then some. Special effects: Wake up and smell the 1990s technology. Video Occasion: Good for multigenerational groups. Suspense: Predictable. Overall movie rating: Three and a half stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.

Follett, Ken. A Dangerous Fortune. Copyright © 1993 by Ken Follett. New York: Delacorte Press, 1993. Print.

Paulos, John Allen. A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. New York: BasicBooks, 1995. Print.