In its elegiac nostalgia for the days of childhood innocence,
Robert Mulligan's The Man in the Moon recalls another of Mulligan's earlier films,
To Kill A Mockingbird. Set in a Louisiana backwater town in the 1950s, the film chronicles the coming-of-age of a young teenage girl. Dani (
Reese Witherspoon) is a fourteen-year-old girl who shares a room with her seventeen-year-old sister Maureen (Emily Warfield). During hot summer nights, they sleep on the screened-in back porch of their home, talking about romance, the future, and the meaning of life. Moving into the house next door is a handsome seventeen-year-old boy, Court Foster (
Jason London). Court meets Dani at the local swimming hole and they are immediately attracted to each other; through Court, Dani experiences her first true and perfect love. But when Court meets Maureen, the sparks really fly and Maureen falls in love with him too. Now Maureen is torn between holding back her love for Court or accepting his love and betraying her sister. A tragic event makes Maureen's mind up for her. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide