Burnt-out baseball player Mark Harmon, upon hearing of the suicide of a childhood friend, hearkens back to his younger days, eventually returning home to put peace to the past. As Harmon's boyhood muse, Jodie Foster is a bit like Auntie Mame at 20, raffish and exciting--but what happens to her character is a writer's pretense and it just doesn't wash (it fails to jibe with the blossomed young woman we've been watching). This light drama, a labor of love for writer-directors Steven Kampmann and William Porter, is awfully slight, relying heavily on comedic asides and nostalgia to round it off (even erring on that score, as the nostalgia seems distinctly falsified). However, Foster has a handful of scenes that touch on something deeper than woozy sentiment and reminiscences; she finds the heart of this piece and manages to give the picture some depth. *1/2 from ****
Review of Stealing Home
