Rating: PG13
Genre:
Comedy Drama
Release Date: 09/11/2001
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Sound: 5.1/2
Run Time: 108 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: MGM
Shirley MacLaine makes her feature directorial debut with this offbeat comedy. Bruno (
Alex D. Linz) is an eight-year-old boy attending a Catholic school; he is bright, is a good student, and wants to become an etymologist. He also likes to wear dresses, which causes him plenty of problems -- bullies beat him up on a regular basis, and the school's Mother Superior (
Kathy Bates) thinks that something must be wrong with him. Bruno's mother Angela (
Stacey Halprin), who tips the scales at 450 pounds, has just lost her husband Dino (
Gary Sinise) to trampy Donna Marie (
Joey Lauren Adams). With her pal Dolores (
Jennifer Tilly) giving Angela regular reports on Dino's activities, she's too occupied to worry much about her son. When Bruno is hurt one day while wearing a skirt, he's taken to the hospital; with Angela suffering from a heart attack and Dino refusing to look after him, it falls to his grandmother Helen (MacLaine) to take care of the boy. But Bruno has finally found a playmate at school who doesn't find him strange -- Shaniqua (
Kaimi Davael), a young black girl who wants to be a cowgirl. While
Bruno was
Shirley MacLaine's first attempt at directing a fictional film, it was not her first experience behind the camera; she previously made the Oscar-nominated documentary
The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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