Pacino has reached the top of his form. He has matured into the perfect actor. This film is his best work. Ever. The screenplay is good all around but exquisitely beautiful in places. The casting is true art, using some of the best talent in town like Pacino, Christopher Plummer, Annette Bening and especially Jennifer Garner. The acting is top of the line, with the players pulling the story together like a breathtaking Russian ballet. This movie is modern family drama, with a soft touch. It has scenes that will make you cringe a bit, and others that just make you smile inside and out. And add in a few laughs. There is an adorable love story, and there's also a little girl that will steal your heart. Broken family relationships cause pain and heartache. Sometimes they end on a good note, and sometimes not.Have you ever smiled, or even laughed, through tears? This film might do that to you. Highly recommended.

Al Pacino really is into the role. It's not that you ever feel like he's slacking when he plays someone, but it's really refreshing to see him go all Rockstar on us. You could almost say it works on a meta level too (him being one of the greatest actors to ever grace the screen). He can also live through things he probably won't be doing in his real life and have a lot of fun with it.The character is very well written (based on a real life musician, clips during the credits, if you wonder who he is) and the story does work. There are many clichés in this, but the actors are so good, you probably won't notice. And no matter how low Al Pacinos character sinks, there is always the believe in him, the aura that he has, the screen presence. Will that all help in the end though?

This film is about an aging musician, who wants to change his life because of a letter sent to him by John Lennon himself; he stops drinking, starts composing new songs and tries to make peace with his son, whom he never met before. It is a sweet story filled with challenges, but each and every one of them are easily predictable. The story is filled with half-written, stereotypical characters, played by brilliant actors. It tries to focus on the story from a perspective with the cuts and the finale, that wants to strengthen the feeling that it is a heavy drama in front of our eyes. Unfortunately, because the plot is boring, the conflict is predictable and the artistic focus is affecting, the whole feels far-fetched, rather than great. Its only real strength is that it's absolutely not a bad film, but it was made for people who love common melodramas.

Regular readers of my film reviews and blog will know that one of my very favourite actors is Al Pacino. I make no claim that he is the finest actor to ever appear on the silver screen, indeed many of his performances are way over the top; but I don't care - I love him. Any movie that Al Pacino stars in is fine in my book - he always lights up the screen, always turns in unforgettable performances, and invariably takes a mundane story and makes it magical.And so it is in Danny Rose, where Al Pacino plays an ageing pop star who can still fill stadiums by singing the same banal songs that he made famous some 40 years earlier. Most of his devoted fans have grown old with him and we see rows and rows of women of a certain age all screaming and whooping whenever he appears on stage. I am trying to think of similar performers in real life, and maybe the likes of Barry Manilow or in the UK, maybe Cliff Richards might fill the bill. But dear old Danny is far more of a caricature than a real life person, and unlike Manilow and Richards, none of his 40 -year old songs have any merit whatsoever, and he really isn't a very nice person.But then something happens that is actually based on a true story. His manager, (the excellent Christopher Plummer in one of his last roles), tracks down a letter that was sent to Danny in 1971 by John Lennon, but which Danny never received. Lennon had sent him some advice about his songwriting and suggested they meet up. Danny is shocked and traumatised as he wonders how his life might have changed if he had received the letter. He is suddenly hit with the realisation that he has been a drunken ass-hole for most of his life; that he is kidding himself if he thinks that his gorgeous, sexy fiancé, one-third of his age, could really care for him, and the fact that he hasn't written a worthwhile song in more than 40 years. He decides to abandon his moneymaking tour (which we later discover was to be his retirement pension) and move into a suburban New Jersey hotel and track down his long lost son who he has never met.There is some wonderful, tender interplay between Pacino, his son's wife and daughter and later his son, who hates him with a purple passion. There are also some amusing, touching scenes with Pacino and his fiancé, (who receives Danny's blessing to cheat on him), and with the female hotel manager and two of the hotel staff. To be honest, the story is a little on the clichéd side, and some of the events are predictable - but not all. There are some blatant attempts to extract a few tears from us as fatal health issues are dragged to centre stage - but not for Danny… Without Pacino, this movie would probably die without much fanfare, but as ever, he lifts it out of the ordinary to a higher plane. Along with Plummer, Jennifer Garner as his daughter-in-law, and the excellent Annette Benning as the hotel manager, they made a corny story it into an excellent movie treat. Hollywood and Pacino oiling the movie wheels to perfection.