Shine

A whacked-out, all-true, audience-pleasing hybrid of ROCKY and RAIN MAN, this expressionistic biopic follows the tribulations of real-life Australian piano virtuoso David Helfgott and manages to make outrageous material seem timid, familiar and cliched. Child prodigy Helfgott starts out an obsessed youth and becomes a ranting, deranged adult, his degeneration abetted by his authoritarian father (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a Holocaust survivor who condemns his son to exile when the boy wants to go off to college. But director Scott Hicks expends too much effort trying to make Helfgott's tortured mental situation cute and joyous -- a dubious proposition that conforms to ...