The Globe and Mail - November 14, 1987

"Innocent rural tale has a knowing charm"
Jay Scott

STACKING is a diminutive delight, a U.S. movie that - the times they have a-changed, this being a compliment - feels like a Canadian movie, and not only because Canadian actress Megan Follows (Anne of Green Gables) is the star. By Hollywood standards, Stacking, set in Lavina, Mont., in 1954, is an art film, but Canadians will recognize it instantly as an American cousin to My American Cousin.

Anna Mae Morgan (Follows) is a 14-year-old firebrand who lives happily on a small farm inefficiently operated by her father, Dan Morgan (Ray Baker), a mild-mannered alcoholic; by her mother, Kathleen Morgan (Christine Lahti), who doubles as a waitress and dreams of California; by their occasional hired hand, Buster McGuire (Frederic Forrest), who combines the worst traits of his employers - he has a drinking problem and motivational deficiencies; and by Anna Mae herself, who has the spunkiness of the braided orphan from Green Gables but is otherwise her own person.

The charms of this perfectly performed film are not to be found in a synopsis of Victoria Jenkins' script, a bucolic idyll about coming of age that is reminiscent, here and there, of Country, Places in the Heart and Heartland. Needing to get the hay stacked (her father is in the hospital), Anna Mae tries to persuade Buster to become responsible. She also enlists the muscle-power of the local teen hunk, Gary (Jason Gedrick), who woos her by killing a rattlesnake - he offers her the reptile's still throbbing tail with an erotic rural insouciance that would do a D. H. Lawrence character proud.

Down at the restaurant, Mom moons after a more urban brand of eroticism. One day, a biker (Peter Coyote) rides by, sees her sitting on the cafe's windowsill - the flyspecked glass softens her profile into the idealized contours of one of those early fifties "Beautiful Hair by Breck" portraits - and stops to snap her picture. It's a moment that changes her life.

Like a prairie summer storm, the drama in Stacking has a way of welling up suddenly and subsiding unpredictably. In Jenkins' script, lush with the poetic platitudes of country speech ("Keep your eye on that Clayton - he wouldn't trip you, but he ouldn't pick you up, neither"), nothing is forced, yet little is overlooked. The beauty Anna Mae sees in her all but barren homeland is ravishingly revealed by Richard Bowen's photography, while the confusion she feels in her far from barren soul is sensitively exposed by director Martin Rosen (Smooth Talk). Stacking is relaxed, innocent and knowing, all at the same time - it's a leisurely roll in the hay on a hot day.

Source: The Globe and Mail

The Vancouver Sun - November 16, 1987

"Movie stacked with fine scenes"
Marke Andrews

Director Martin Rosen has an even, deft touch with actors. His Smooth Talk of last year was an evocative coming-of-age story, with a subtle, heart-breaking performance from Laura Dern.

Rosen makes it two in a row with Stacking, a prairie drama about another teenage girl's passage into adulthood, with star turns from Christine Lahti, Frederic Forrest and Canadian actress Megan Follows.

Follows (Anne of Green Gables) plays Anna Mae, the 14-year-old only child of Montana hay farmer Dan Morgan (Ray Baker) and diner waitress Kathleen (Lahti). There was a time when Dan's family owned half the valley, but now, in 1954, the Bakers can barely hang on to their last plot of land.

Dan and Kathleen don't have much of a marriage, and when Dan is hospitalized in a farming accident, Kathleen takes stock of their future. Sick of the diner, tired of scuffling to break even, she longs to break free of the farm. Dan, tied to years of family tradition, says no. When a leather-jacketed stranger (Peter Coyote, in a nifty cameo) passes through on his motorcycle and offers Kathleen a one-way trip to California, she almost takes him up on the offer.

Anna Mae is her father's girl. Determined to stay, she coaxes Buster (Forrest), who was once Dan's hired hand but is now the town drunk, to rebuild the broken farm equipment and help her harvest the summer crop.

Stacking is a treasure of subtle scenes. During a ride back from the hospital, Kathleen and Buster - who used to be sweethearts - reminisce about old times without really saying much of anything. The look in their eyes, however, speak volumes about how each missed out on the untethered dreams of youth.

Unlike her boxed-in performance in Housekeeping, Lahti shines here. Her Kathleen burns with restlessness. Sitting under the hairdryer reading a magazine article on exotic California, she envelops herself in an angry cloud of cigarette smoke, as if trying to obliterate her small-town existence.

Follows is natural as the resourceful farm girl; she looks good with cow dung on her shirt. Forrest, one of America's most underrated actors, saunters across the Montana landscape like a drunken, pot-bellied angel. A cowboy with a heart of gold, Buster's the kind of employee who sleeps half the day and then busts his tail to make it up to you.

Another plus is Patrick Gleeson's musical soundtrack, which features guitarist Michael Hedges, violinist Darol Anger and the versatile Kronos Quartet.

Source: The Vancouver Sun

The Ottawa Citizen - January 8, 1988

"Megan Follows shows star quality in gentle film"
Noel Taylor

Stacking is the sort of title that leaves you wondering whether they really mean stacking, as in haystacking or, surely, something more metaphoric.

But Stacking is what it says, and building a haystack on the empty Montana meadows, where the hills roll like waves to the horizon, is the climax to a quiet and gently moving film.

If you want to be lyrical about it Stacking sums up a way of life, an attitude, of not giving or letting go... but don't be put off by such pretensions. Stacking is the sort of film big distributing chains look away from, and independents, like the always-resourceful Towne, eagerly grab.

For Canadian audiences it has the built-in appeal of seeing where Megan Follows is going after the national acclaim which greeted her Anne of Green Gables. And the answer, to no one's surprise, is very nicely... very confidently even if she is back to playing a spunky 14-year-old country girl again.

In many ways this is Follows's film, as the child of a father (Ray Baker) who is in no hurry to leave his hospital bed and a mother (Christine Lahti) who yearns to escape from the small town where the only reality she recognizes is "Me, here - forever."

The one regret is that it won't do much for Follows's career in a popular sense, though it's a great exhibit for her dramatic curriculum vitae. The few who will see it in its three-day run here will feel like celebrating this confirmation of a positive talent who may be lost to the Canadian scene while Follows builds her career south of the border.

Stackingis the sort of film that opens with an empty landscape, a truck driving down a straight and dusty road while a guitar plucks out a quiet melody. It will remind you, rewardingly, of Country, Jessica Lange's 1984 movie about a woman holding onto the family farm against all odds and the local bank.

Only this time the woman is 14, and Lahti, an under-appreciated actress who succeeds in creating sympathy out of creeping despair, is the mother who lets go.

While the mother dreams of California, and father carouses in his hospital bed with the night nurses, Follows as Anna Mae gets down to the business of hanging in and holding on.

With Buster McGuire, the local hell-raiser played by Fredric Forrest with a matchstick in the mouth, a bottle in the hand and the kind of quiet integrity that prompts Oscar talk, she rebuilds the family stacker - an ungainly contraption, half dune buggy, half Rube Goldberg fork-lift that scoops up hay bales.

The relationship between them demands a delicacy that director Martin Rosen (Watership Down and 1986's Smooth Talk) nurses through teen tantrums and a brief bout of drunken passion. There simply isn't a false note anywhere - not even the mysterious motorcyclist (Peter Coyote) who putters into town one day and rekindles in Lahti her dreams of escape.

Follows holds the film together... a performance that plays with the possibilities of a young girl's awakening without ever exploiting it.

As for the Montana landscape, in gathering storm and soft summer day, it's a backdrop that cinematographer Richard Bowen occasionally lifts lovingly to front stage for an audience to savor its sensual beauty.

Stacking has been put together with affection and care, a film not to quaff, but to sip on.

Source: The Ottawa Citizen