Scottish drama avoids the usual pitfalls for heart-tuggers about kids When you hear the plot of "Dear Frankie," you may briefly feel a wave of cynicism roll over you. But the movie has been shot with love and wisdom, and its implausible premise doesn't get in the way...

Since you may only have a week or so to catch it, you might consider prioritizing a warm, humane Scottish movie called "Dear Frankie." There isn't any hype. You won't see anyone huckstering the film on Letterman, Oprah or Leno. "Dear Frankie" engenders word of mouth...

*** In the sweet and melancholy Dear Frankie, single mom Lizzie (Emily Mortimer) keeps up a logistically tricky subterfuge that could never work in modern life. She writes and mails letters to her deaf 9-year-old son Frankie, pretending they are from his seafaring...

Directed by Shona Auerbach. Starring Emily Mortimer, Jack McElhone and Gerard Butler. Rating: 8 out of 10 First-time director Shona Auerbach understands what some directors never learn: that the space between words is as important as the words themselves. We see that...

Frankie, the 9-year-old boy at the center of the sweet, enormously touching Scottish film "Dear Frankie," is deaf, mute and always the new kid in town. His mother, Lizzie (Emily Mortimer), has been uprooting him every few months since he was little, moving from city...

"Dear Frankie" is sickeningly cruel or tenderly sweet. Sometimes it's one or the other; sometimes it's both at the same time. Perhaps the same statements are true of parenthood. The jarring, yet sentimental Cockney drama from first-time feature director Shona Auerbach...

It must be something in the water. Something that counteracts potential saccharine overload and transforms potentially syrupy scripts into winsome cinematic tales. Or maybe it's the brisk British weather. Whatever the reason, "Dear Frankie" emerges as the second...

Satisfying and even gratifying, Dear Frankie is loaded with traps. Magically, it escapes almost all of them. First, the characters: There's a fatherless, hearing-impaired 9-year-old boy, Frankie, who longs for a dear ol' dad. There's a devoted but discouraged mother,...

Dear Frankie Rating 4 Starring: Emily Mortimer, Jack McElhone, Gerard Butler Playing at: AMC cinema. Parents' guide: for all - - - In the wrong hands, Shona Auerbach's Dear Frankie could have gone way off the sentimentality scale. Look at the elements: a single...

PLOT: An overprotective mother hires a stranger to pose as her son's long-lost father, a man whom the boy knows only from fake letters from abroad that the mother has been secretly writing. The decision has unexpected consequences. --- IN A SEEN-IT-ALL world of...

Always on the move, nine-year-old Frankie and his single mom Lizzie settle in a Scottish town. Lizzie doesn't want Frankie, who is deaf, to discover that they're fleeing from his father. She writes fake letters to convince him that his father is out having wild...

When the 'fictional' ship comes to town, Frankie's mother has to face the truth. Every once in a while, American audiences are fortunate to see a little foreign film with a whole lot of heart and character. Actually, it is more like they are fortunate to see a foreign...

For the perfect lump of sugar to stabilize so much acid, the British film Dear Frankie is a soft-hearted but soberly made little movie that gives sentimentality a good name. Frankie is a 9-year-old deaf child whose abusive father deserted the family, leaving the...

WEE WITHOUT being really twee, Dear Frankie is built for audiences craving adorable foreign kids striving through life, with a finale that works the tear ducts like pepper spray. The film boasts the added appeal of black-eyed, elfin-chinned Emily Mortimer as Lizzie, a...

This little gem of a Scottish film is the kind of story that can be told only in the movies. Despite the drudge and routine hum of small-town port life it portrays, it's just too well-intentioned to be true. Still, it finds an idealistic, hopeful humanity within its...

Cast & Credits Lizzie Morrison: Emily Mortimer The Stranger: Gerard Butler Marie: Sharon Small Frankie Morrison: Jack McElhone Nell Morrison: Mary Riggans Ricky Munroe: Sean Brown Catriona Murray: Jayd Johnson Ally: John Kazek Miss MacKenzie: Katy Murphy Miramax...

Frankie, the 9-year-old boy at the center of the sweet, enormously touching Scottish film "Dear Frankie," is deaf, mute and always the new kid in town. His mother, Lizzie (Emily Mortimer), has been uprooting him every few months since he was little, moving from city...

By all rights, ''Dear Frankie" should be unbearably sentimental bilge. That's certainly how it comes across in the trailers. But this wee Scottish drama takes a mawkish premise and, by playing its cards close to the vest, imbues it with quiet, careworn dignity. The...

3 stars (out of 4) Sometimes we enjoy movies even if we know exactly how they work and exactly how they're going to turn out. Director Shona Auerbach's debut feature "Dear Frankie" appeals to this sensibility, with its engaging, intimate story of a tender deception....

Most movies are afraid of scenes where people simply sit together without speaking. Maybe filmmakers think the audience's attention span will snap, or somebody will turn the channel. Maybe they're right. Still, "Dear Frankie" proves the spectacle of people silently...

A woman's flight from an abusive husband turns into a strangely heartwarming story of devotion in Scotland's "Dear Frankie." Emily Mortimer ("Lovely and Amazing") plays the mother, who's spent several years on the run, moving from town to town, taking odd jobs, doing...