First Glances: "The River Why"

Oregonian writer Shawn Levy saw two feature films at this week’s Ashland Independent Film Festival, one of them being the “work-in-progress” adaption of David James Duncan’s “The River Why.” The movie fails to capture the magic of the book, according to Levy: “There are moments of beauty and wisdom in the film, and some sequences that are built with sharp and supple craft. But much of it is clumsy and prosaic.”