I haven't read Michael Cunningham's A Home At The End Of The World, but I have read his other well-known novel, The Hours, and can attest to the delicate, prying power of his words, and can imagine just what was eviscerated as Cunningham himself sought to adapt Home to the big screen. The old cliche regarding adapatations of novels is that they're like Cliff's Notes, with all the plot, none of the essence, and that's essentially what we get here. There are the things I imagine Cunningham and the director, Michael Mayer, kept intact: the characters, the scenes that drive the plot forward. Then there are the things that seem to be sorely missing: namely, everything that elevates a story from a series of events into something deeply meaningful.

Also missing is star Colin Farrell's much ballyhooed frontal nude shot, which has been cropped to conceal his manhood. It's a throwaway moment, but just sayin.' More important is that Farrell himself, playing a young man named Bobby Morrow, offers the nuances the film itself lacks; it's almost shocking to think that, given the calibre of his talent, he has yet to be in a great film.

We're introduced to Bobby Morrow in 1967, when he's nine years old and lives in the suburbs with his parents and his older, polyester-bedecked brother Carlton, whom he idolizes. One night he walks in on Carlton having sex with his girlfriend; Carlton invites him into the room with a laid back smile. "Are you freaked out?" he asks him. Bobby nods. "It's okay. It's just love."

Soon afterwards, Carlton introduces him to LSD, and Bobby finds himself floating over the world and seeing all of it as his home. As inherently troublingas it may inherently be to see a nine year old being given drugs by his brother, there's something very sweet and liberating about the scene.

Over the next few year, Bobby grows into a laid back teenager (played by talented newcomer Erik Smith), cast in the image of his brother, who tragically died shortly after that acid trip. His mother and father follow suit, and thus orphaned, he moves into the home of his best friend, Jonathan Glover. Jonathan is a skinny, effeminate kid with big glasses and braces. Bobby ingratiates himself with the family, and introduces both Jonathan and his mother Alice (Sissy Spacek) to the joys of marijuana.

These early scenes are where the movie works best; director Mayer establishes a sure footing and handles the difficult subject matter with gentle humor that thankfully sidesteps any sort of sitcom trappings. That subject matter includes the relationship between Bobby and Jonathan, which segues quickly into something sexual, maybe even romantic, and between Bobby and Alice, who catches the two boys with their pants down and is surprised at her own reaction.

The film then cuts to the early eighties. Jonathan has moved to New York; Bobby still lives with Jonathan's parents. He's grown into a young man who's somehow different than the child we've seen; whether that change is just a difference in the performances or something that's been left unexplained in the script, I don't know, but it's immediately noticeable. Bobby seems simpler now, more timid, and it's only with some urging that he goes to New York to visit Jonathan, whom he hasn't seen in years. Jonathan (now played by Dallas Roberts) is a successful bohemian denzien of Alphabet City, and he lives with Clare (Robin Wright Penn), a free spirited party girl. They explain to Bobby that they're thinking of having a child together. Jonathan is by now a fully open homosexual, but he admits that he does love Clare. It's also clear that he has strong feelings for Bobby, who returns the sentiment. He's not gay, though, nor is he bisexual, and one of the things I like the most about the film was that it doesn't make waves over sexual orientation, or the fact that a character is gay or not gay. It's all just love.

In short order: Clare takes Bobby to bed and begins a relationship with him. In response, Jonathan starts cruising recklessly. This story being set in the early eighties in Manhattan, it's not hard to guess what his fate will be. Before that happens, though, Clare gets pregnant, and the three of them decide to move into rural house in Woodstock, figuring that the love they all have for each other will keep their nontraditional family unit bound together.

I see in this story, and in the character of Bobby, who is a being made simply of uncoditional love, the possibility for something moving and profound, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what I would find in Cunningham's book. Here, though, things are told that should have been shown, explained that should have been left for us to feel. Other elements require more legwork than we should be expected to provide: when Bobby breaks down crying the first time he sleeps with Clare, which is in fact the first time he's ever had sexual intercourse, I wouldn't be surprised if most viewers don't associate this with the memory of his brother, which I assume is what was intended. Nothing kills emotion like having to think too hard about it.

Farrell, as mentioned, graces the material with choices all his own, and Roberts guides Jonathan along particularly difficult dramatic ground with admirable restraint. It goes without saying that Spacek shines, and some of the best moments in the film are when Mayer, almost in awe of her, just leaves the camera on her face as she speaks. On the other hand, there's Robin Wright Penn, who normally is a luminous presence but here is sadly miscast as Clare, who is essentially a carbon copy of Kate Winslet's character in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Winslet nailed the type so perfectly that it ceased to become a type at all; Penn tries to reach the same level, but comes dangerously close to being grating instead. She's too old for this part, although she would be perfect for the woman this character becomes after this story ends.

When it does end, I was disappointed that it wasn't going to have a chance to get any better (I was also, rather ashamedly, relieved). The film runs just over ninety minutes, and I'm sure there was much that was cut out; it bares the marks of a struggle and sometimes lurches with fits and starts from scene to scene, using (an admittedly admirable selection of) songs to binds the pieces toether.

I admired David Hare's adaptation of The Hours because he so gracefully captured everything that made the novel great without undermining its effectiveness as a film, and perhaps Cunningham should have ceded this job to someone else as well. At Home At The End Of The World achieves that grace only twice; in those beginning scenes, and then again at the very end, where Jonathan's inevitable fate is handled with honesty and simplicity, and he and Jonathan take a moment to regard each other and simply exist. There's no sense that they have another scene to get to or something important to say. And indeed they don't, because as they stand there, the credits begin to roll. Too little, too late.