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'Off the Map': A quirky, refreshing journey
by Eleanor Ringel Gillespie

Based on Joan Ackermann's play, "Off the Map" is set in 1974 in a lone-prairie corner of New Mexico where the Groden family lives a hippie-ish existence amid a John Ford landscape. As far as mainstream Hollywood is concerned, a delicate, funny, character-driven movie like this is, well, off the map. It simply doesn't exist in the same universe as vast opening weekends and fast-food tie-ins. Hollywood's loss. Ours, too. Read the full review

TO SUM UP
In a lone-prairie corner of New Mexico in 1974, a family's hippie-ish Eden (no phone, no electricity) is altered when an IRS agent shows up, looking for seven years of their tax returns. The couple's 11-year-old daughter, who desperately wants all the material things her parents have rejected, hopes this will be her conduit to the outside world.

FILM FACTS ...

Holedigger Studios

'Off the Map'

Director: Campbell Scott
Starring: Amy Brenneman, Valentina de Angelis, Joan Allen, Sam Elliott, Jim True-Frost
Run time: 105 minutes
Release date: April 22, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for nudity and thematic elements.

On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

READ THE REVIEW

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: B
"Quiet and quirky, yet refreshingly unpretentious ... imbued with a sense of acceptance and getting on with it that's wonderfully generous and thoroughly American."