Today's featured adaptation is "Seven Days in Utopia," which may make you wistful for summer days on the links (or a sermon). The movie, about a struggling golfer who learns about sport -- and life -- is based on "Golf's Sacred Journey: Seven Days at the Links of Utopia" by David L. Cook, a respected teacher of pro golfers and other athletes. Here are excerpts from reviews:
-- Los Angeles Times: With Golf Channel commentators and players such as K.J. Choi participating, the film bears an official stamp of approval [and] it plays as a "Zen and the Art of the Links" with a Bible Belt persuasion.
-- New York Times: A stultifying hybrid of athletic instruction film and Christian sermon, the movie, directed by Matthew Dean Russell, is ... a kind of Southern-fried, Christian “Tuesdays With Morrie.”
-- Roger Ebert: I would rather eat a golf ball than see this movie again. It tells the dreadful parable of a pro golfer who was abused by his dad, melts down in the Texas Open and stumbles into the clutches of an insufferable geezer in the town of Utopia (pop. 375), who promises him that after seven days in Utopia, he will be playing great golf. He will also find Jesus, but for that, you don't have to play golf, although it might help.
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