Definitely a tug-at-your-heartstrings kind of movie. Based out of the 1960's, a woman deals with the struggles of being a stay-at-home wife to an alcoholic, a mother of ten children, and never having enough money to pay the bills and have food on the table. She begins entering contests (which were apparently very common in that time period), and to attest her writing abilities, winning them. The contests put food on the table, pay the mortgage, and buy the milk (often). Through the ups and downs of child rearing, her tumultuous marriage, and her winnings - this movie makes you truly feel like you understand their struggle. It never ceases to amaze what women went through in that era. Amazing woman, great movie. Would recommend.

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (2005)A chipper, sometimes funny, sometimes balmy film about the brilliance and determination of one woman during the apparently naive commercial idiocy of the 1950s in the United States.And Julianne Moore nails it as Evelyn, making this quirky, lightweight story take on a tinge of truth and depth. Enough to make it a fun film, but also a trenchant one. At times.Woody Harrelson plays the husband here, with not quite as much conviction as you'd like (he's a better middle class grunt in "True Detectives"). And Laura Dern has a really small role as an echo of the housewife played by Moore. What the woman have in common here is not just willfully playing out their roles as homemakers, which is fair enough, and of secondary characters outside the home, which is not. They are also contest players—and winners. Evelyn in particular has a knack for a turn of phrase that fits the corny jingles and slogans of this pre- Mad Men era in advertising.Part of the appeal here is easily the re-creation of the world, with its cars and houses and clothes. And attitudes. I'm just young enough to not know if it's accurate, and just old enough to know that it's exaggerated. And yet tongue is not quite in cheek here. There's the feeling that this is all meant to seem exactly how it was, and that's where it's a little too "Donna Reed" all along. I can only assume that life was a little less shallow than it comes off here. But who knows? It did strike me that the timing was off at times, that the cars were at times too old for the year (back then, people in the suburbs upgraded their cars often), and the music was out of sync by far. The push for a false innocence is closer to a Wes Anderson fantasy than anything.Which is fine! It's still "a gas" to watch, "terrif" from beginning to end. And Julianne Moore is quite amazing, as complex and interesting as the character needed to be. And under the radar movie. Recommended.

This film is sweet but ultimately not all that interesting. That's partly due to the way it is told and partly due to an extremely simplistic portrayal of the main character. When the most engaging person on screen is a supporting character the audience isn't even supposed to like, that's generally a sign of a movie that doesn't quite get it right.Based on a memoir by one of her daughters, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio tells the story of Evelyn Ryan (Julianne Moore). She's a 1950s housewife in the aforementioned small town with ten kids and bitter, boozy husband (Woody Harrelson). The entire film is basically about how Evelyn's family struggles with money and with her husband's irresponsibility and simmering anger and resentment, problems Evelyn deals with by entering and winning an astonishing number of writing and jingle contests.You see, Evelyn was a "contestor", one of many people around the country who entered the advertising contests companies ran throughout the 50s and into the 60s. It was both the outlet for the writing career Evelyn gave up when she married a lesser man and a way to paper over all of the family's money concerns, which would exacerbated by her husband drinking away much of his paycheck.A pleasant and mostly well-meaning tale, the movie is never able to really click. As hard as it tries, it never grows on you or makes you genuinely care about what happens to Evelyn and her family. I think there are 3 reasons for that.1. The storytelling, especially at the beginning of the film, keeps you to much at a distance. It plops you down into Evelyn's life after she's already got her full family in place and has been entering contests for a long while. Then it tries to fill you in on all the back story by having Evelyn tell you herself, but not just through voice-over narration. It has Evelyn look directly into the camera and talk to the audience. Sometimes she does that in the middle of the screen. Sometimes there will be two Evelyn's on screen. One to act normally and the other to address the viewer. It's a technique that pulls you out of the story because it's too clever for this material, like telling a knock knock joke in Latin.2. Evelyn Ryan is a woman of relentless positivity who greets every challenge and setback in life with the same refusal to get angry or dwell on any unfairness. That might make you a great and happy person in real life. It does not make you interesting to watch. There's nothing to grab on and relate to with her, unlike her husband. It's kind of fun to see Woody Harrelson try and convey his character's stew of basic decency, frustration and wounded pride. He's a man who lost his chance to be a singer after a throat injury and took a job he doesn't like to support his family, only to be shown up by his more talented wife. Watching someone grapple with unhappiness if far more involving than watching someone who refuses to be unhappy. Evelyn is simply too opaque a human being to be the center of this sort of story.3. Even though Evelyn proclaims "I'm not a saint!" in the film, that's how she's presented. But if you pay attention to the relationship between Evelyn and her husband, as seen by her author daughter, there could have been a much more interesting take on her. While her husband is angry and yelling and acting out, Evelyn essentially just ignores his behavior. She doesn't interact with him like they're both adults, but like he's an overgrown and troublesome son she can't deal with any more. Evelyn lets him stew in his own juices while she goes about her own business, abandoning him to become greatly resented by their children. Though her daughter could apparently never acknowledge it, there are the outlines of a much more complex Evelyn Miller. Less a saint and more a woman who participates in her own martyrdom.The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio has some appeal as a glance into a substratum of mid-20th century Americana, but it never manages to work on the emotional level needed for this sort of family-friendly film.

This movie has been played close to 100 times in the last 5 months on TV, but in was on the high end channels' 370 to 380 digital. Later it had gotten down to lower channel 149 to 171. These are commercial free and I'm glad I taped it as a favorite family movie. I hope this movie is someday shown on the regular 2 digit channels so more people can see it, like they did with "October Sky". In the movie, the dress code seemed right for the time period. Of course, after seeing the movie I had to go to the internet to dig up everything a could on the Ryan family. Just a few minutes ago, I found the Terry (the writer) had died of cancer a couple of months ago. It was great that the book came out and was made into movie. Of course, Terry herself, showing that old typewriter, was in it at the end as well as all the Ryan children. It was a good ending to a good movie.