The Magic of Belle Isle

Monte Wildhorn is a once-successful writer who has withdrawn from life after the death of his wife, finding comfort in alcohol rather than in his work. Confined to a wheelchair, he takes up residence for the summer in a small lakeside town, where his nephew has arranged for him to stay in a musician friend's holiday house, on the condition that he look after the dog. There he meets his neighbour Charlotte O'Neil, a divorced mother raising three daughters, and the family slowly draws him out of his isolation. Charlotte asks him to help encourage the imagination of one of her children, and the arrangement gives Monte a reason to write again.

Rob Reiner directed the film, the fourteenth of the nineteen features he has directed in chronological order, following Flipped and preceding And So It Goes. He wrote the screenplay with Andrew Scheinman and Guy Thomas. Morgan Freeman plays Monte, with Virginia Madsen as Charlotte, Madeline Carroll, Emma Fuhrmann and Nicolette Pierini as her daughters, and Kenan Thompson as Henry. It was produced by Nicolas Chartier, Alan Greisman and Lori McCreary, and runs 109 minutes.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from 460 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 4.9 out of 10 from 33 reviews, a wide gap between professional and audience response.