Based on a memoir, four siblings must learn to take care of themselves as their responsibility-averse, free-spirit parents both inspire and inhibit them.
There are heart-tugging moments in The Glass Castle, but Walls's bestselling memoir needed to be roughed up and aired out. For it to match up to the book, the movie needed the glass to be smashed, not every shard treasured.
A best-selling book, a promising director, and a great cast made The Glass Castle seem like a tantalizing project, but the pitfalls proved too numerous for this tricky adaptation.
Glass Castle holds your attention in the way that hard luck stories do, but Cretton's reticence in fully exploiting this tale makes for a largely frustrating experience.
Due to the herculean task of adaptation, "The Glass Castle" lacks the emotional potency of Cretton's earlier work and the unflinching detail of Walls' memoir.
