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Shaded places (The giving tree)

Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

Sometimes secrets are too painful to share.

Emily (Christina Applegate) shines. She walks into a room and you can't keep your eyes off her. Her smile is radiant. Everybody loves Emily and rightfully so - she's almost perfect.

Best friends from high school, a group of four young men and five young women have lost contact over the decade since their graduation. Each has gone their own way and has struggled with finding themself in a changing and challenging world. None of them, however, has lost touch with Emily. She was and still is the nucleus of the group.

Emily sends a letter to each of the friends requesting them to meet her at her cabin in a small mountain town on northern California - a place where they used to spend their summers together, and they all answer Emily's calling.

The first night everybody shows up except for Emily, and a wide range of emotions between these once friends now strangers emerge. Love, tension, conflicts and a curiosity as to the whereabouts of Emily surface.

That night, while they sleep, Emily shows up. What the sleeping friends don't realise is that the action Emily will take before sunrise will dramatically change the course of their weekend and force them to look at their crumbling bonds of friendship, and life in general, in a frightfully different way.

Starring Paul Gleason, Brad Harrison, Leslie Horan, Justin Lazard, Molly Ringwald, Tiffany Salerno, Johnathon Schaech and Moon Unit Zappa. Written by Tim Puntillo, directed by Cameron Thor.

Intelligence analyst

Secret Agent Acid Thunder

Theatrical report

Shades of grey. No, hang on... The shade... no, wait... Shady vista retirement village... no... oh yes, Shaded places. A delightful tale about springtime and feasting, with much merriment and mirth.

No, wait... wrong millennium... Shaded places starring... starring... Christina Applegate aka blonde bombshell, that's the one! Super-sexy babe says 20 words and manages to sum up the entire plot.

I enjoyed the idea of a group of friends with serious problems between themselves sorting them out because a friend took her life. That's the problem with being an optimist, you're certain to be let down. Oh well, others have taken their lives for less (See The rage: Carrie 2).

I also enjoyed the dramas faced by the characters both as a group and on an individual level but he also felt that it is just another tale of woe wrapped up in the Hollywood publicity machine. As for being a cliché, this film is even touted as The big chill for the new generation.

Overall, Shaded places is enjoyable enough as long as you don't expect too much. It doesn't speak to a generation the way The big chill does to the baby boomers but it is watchable.

Security censorship classification

MA 15+ (Medium level violence, medium level sex scene)

Surveillance time

89 minutes (1:29 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

9 February 2000