''The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom'' is a 2011 Canadian coming-of-age film written and directed by Tara Johns and starring

Macha Grenon Macha Grenon (born June 7, 1968) is a Canadian film and television actress.Gil Bellows Gil Bellows (born June 28, 1967) is a Canadians, Canadian actor, screenwriter, and director. He is best known for the roles of Tommy Williams in the 1994 movie ''The Shawshank Redemption'', Billy Thomas in the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox televi ...

and

Julia Sarah Stone Julia Sarah Stone (born November 24, 1997) is a Canadian actress. She began studying theater at the age of six, and appeared in a number of school plays over the following years. After booking a small part in an independent short film in 2009, sh ...

Dolly Parton Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, actress, philanthropist, and businesswoman, known primarily for her work in country music. After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Parton made her album d ...

provides a voice cameo.

Plot

Elizabeth lives in

Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...

in 1976. She is nearly 12, which Marion, her mother, points out "makes you still 11". Elizabeth and her friend Annabelle are looking forward to their bodies maturing, including the possibility that they might get "big boobs" like

. Her father, Phil, answers her questions about the family's blood types for a school project. When the project is reviewed in her science class, it reveals that her blood type means that she is not her parents' natural child. She is angry and hurt, and dreams of the possibility of Dolly being her real mother. Annabelle's mother, Stella, who is active in the woman's movement, admires Dolly as a strong independent businesswoman, adding to Elizabeth's fantasy. Elizabeth tries to ride her bike to a Dolly concert in

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

, but is stopped hours later at the Emerson border. Marion drives to get her, and the two form a stronger connection over the next two days as Marion takes her to Minneapolis to meet Dolly.

Reception

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds a 40% approval rating, based on 5 reviews with an

average rating In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...

of 5.30/10. Bruce DeMara of ''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...

'' said that "''The Year My Mom Was Dolly Parton'' relies on a good but not great script, well-drawn characters and performances and a pleasant, fuzzy sense of a simpler time". Liam Lacey of ''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'' wrote: "An ingratiating but overly contrived Canadian coming-of-age tale".

Awards

Streaming

In December 2019 the film was released online on the

Canada Media Fund The Canada Media Fund (CMF, french: Fonds des médias du Canada - FMC) is a public-private partnership founded on April 1, 2010 by the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canadian cable industry. It is used to fund the creation of original ...

’s Encore + YouTube channel.

References

External links

* Canadian coming-of-age drama films English-language Canadian films 2010s English-language films 2010s Canadian films {{2010s-Canada-film-stub