daxxak The film is in 3 parts. The first part follows the Sudanese children who have lost everything and are seeking safety.The second part is a gentle but well-observed satire, marking the absolutely typical inhumanity and su-bnormality of many Americans who have never even left the state they were born in, their utter lack of any understanding of another culture, much less how strange everything is for these refugees from a very different world. Culture shock is completely ignored.A tiny example is the jello presented to the 3 brothers on their arrival at their final destination in weird and alien Kansas. (Yes, that is how it seems to the rest of the world! The world outside Northern America, which barely exists so far as most Americans are concerned!) The well-meaning volunteer intends it as a welcome token but the brothers don't even recognise it as food! (And of course part of the satire is that it isn't.)The last third is partly a redemption of some Americans who find ways around the legal craziness that has swamped the US, which denies it has any involvement itself in terrorism, except as victim. It is also partly about love and sacrifice.A bittersweet and at the same time a heartwarming gem of a film.

eddie_baggins While its very much cut from the same cloth as films like The Blind Side and its story reeks of Hollywood sap, you'd be hard pressed to not find enjoyment in this based around real life stories The Good Lie, a film that more than likely bypassed cinemas near you upon release last year and failed to find an audience in any capacity.Produced by the Academy Award winning team of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, The Good Lie certainly has pedigree behind it and with the true story of The Lost Boys Of Sudan as its base, it's hard to know exactly why the film failed so dismally when it was rolled out towards the later end of last year.Reviewed well and rated highly by audiences, one suspects that The Good Lie has the potential to be a slowly building sleeper hit in the years to come and with a tale so easy to like as this, it will be a film that brings both smiles and tears to many different people the world over even though its somewhat twee handling can hamper the films emotional engagement and some scripting scenario/acting turns dampen the films overall quality.The biggest success found within the Good Lie lays entirely on how central group of uprooted refugees led by Arnold Oceng's determined Mamere and Ger Duany's God fearing Jerimiah adapt to life in the land of opportunity in America. There's simple joys to be found in the sincere questioning these kind hearted souls ask and director Philippe Falardeau does a great job of handling his largely unknown cast in the way in which this is portrayed. The top billing of Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon is a little bit of marketing ploy here as a warning as she is largely a bit part player to the Sudanese squad and her role is a little too much "Sandra Bullock" to really work.An enjoyable, often funny and occasionally moving tale with call backs to real life trials over adversity, The Good Lie never becomes anything akin to other classic such tales but it's certainly a film worth tracking down. A quality production that deserved more credit than it ever got upon release, The Good Lie is just the type of Hollywood ilk that we need more of.3 1/2 McDonalds trips out of 5

851222 Greetings from Lithuania."The Good Lie" (2014) is very good movie based on a true story. It's not much inspirational, but it's a greatly done, and if sometimes it feels like you know where it is going, still it is a very enjoyable ride. The starts of this movie are 4 refugees, not top billed Reese Witherspoon which is on the poster - she is more like a side character, but it is as usually good performance. The first half of the movie (about 40 min) focuses only on the story of these poor children and it tels their story, which later moves to USA, with obligatory scenes where they are amazed by pica / MacDonald / elevator and etc. But these scenes don't look cheeze or fake as it was in "Million Dollar Arm" - by the time when these inevitable scenes arrive, you are know these characters well enough.Overall, "The Good Lie" isn't anything sensational nor great, but it's a very well made movie, that will definitely move you a bit.

TxMike Some years ago I saw a documentary on the subject, but this movie is a fictional story inspired by the real events. In fact its content was run by real survivors of the Sudan wars of the 1980s to make sure everything was realistic.The title is from "Huck Finn" and we encounter it three times, it means a lie which is appropriate for the good of someone else, maybe even to save their life.The story starts in the 1980s and we see how whole villages were wiped out by gunfire and burning. In this tale three brothers and their sister in South Sudan manage to run away and survive, then head East towards Ethiopia where they had been told they could get refuge and food. The only transportation for most Sudanese was walking so they thought nothing of making such a trip of several hundred miles, and with little food or fresh water.They eventually meet up with many others headed south to Kenya so they joined them. Their fate was a refugee camp where they could get food, medical care, and safety, but many of them stayed there for years, some never leaving this refugee camp.This movie concerns the three brothers and their sister who received the opportunity to travel to the USA where they would find work and integrate themselves into society. But there was a problem, they had to separate the boys, headed for Kansas City, from their sister headed for Boston, because of the availability of foster homes.So that is the main story here, their relocation to a land of strange customs. They are assigned to Reese Witherspoon as Carrie who would help them find jobs. As she realized how far they had to go in this new environment she became much more involved and eventually to try to reunite the boys with their sister.This is a very good movie and brings home the big issue of internal strife and displacement, not only in South Sudan but in many countries all over the world. Aside from Reese, many of the actors were either men who had actually been young boys in South Sudan or men whose parents were.