Review: 'Jackie & Ryan' Starring Katherine Heigl And Ben Barnes Lacks Authenticity

This is a reprint of our review from the 2014 Venice Film Festival.

Perhaps stung by the middling-to-poor reviews for her last film “Texas Killing Fields,” director Ami Canaan Mann (daughter of Michael) returns to screens under cover of absolute directorial anonymity with “Jackie & Ryan,” a movie hamstrung in its attempts to be a “Crazy Heart” or even a “Country Strong”-ish vehicle for Katherine Heigl by being more bland than a mashed potato dinner. It’s a strangely old-fashioned film, yielding a big enough crop of corn to revive the entire Midwestern economy, putting forth a dubiously romanticized view of the philosophical beauty of the train-hopping lifestyle. And while Ben Barnes does the film's decent music great justice with his surprisingly lovely singing voice, that’s really the only authentic feeling thing therein. “Jackie & Ryan" is supposedly all about learning how to git where ya gotta go, but none of the characters start or end in particularly interesting...