USAToday
Claudia Puig
Told as a fable, Henry Poole Is Here tries to offer moviegoers a pool of hope in a barren landscape.
Anchored by Luke Wilson's engaging performance, Poole is often affecting, occasionally vacuous. But it does tackle material that Hollywood has shied away from: the nature of faith and the existence of miracles.
Henry is a disheartened man who tries to hide out in suburbia, in a drab house in the neighborhood where he grew up. It's never quite explained why he chose to spend a large sum of money on an unremarkable house that seems to bring him no joy. The area, he says, was the last place he remembered being happy, yet his most vivid childhood memories are of his parents fighting. Though enigmatic, Henry is not a bad guy. He has simply disengaged from ordinary human interaction.
He can't escape the friendly curiosity of his neighbor Esperanza (Babel's Adriana Barranza). She spots a stain on his stucco wall and interprets it to be a miraculous apparition of the face of Jesus. Of course, her name, which is Spanish for hope, is no accident. She irks Henry by trying to turn his barren backyard into a shrine. George Lopez is believably low-key as her parish priest, who calmly accepts Henry's cynicism.
Henry comes out of his stupor long enough to connect with Dawn, another neighbor. (Radha Mitchell). Her name also is significant: She brings to Henry the dawning of something akin to life and rekindles his emotions.
Poole explores the possibility that miracles lie just beneath our noses, or perhaps just in our minds. either way, what matters is having hope. The film has some amusing moments and can be intriguing when it focuses on the slow transformation of a hopeless, faithless man.
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