Morgan Freeman doesn’t narrate Rob Reiner’s new movie, The Magic of Belle Isle, but if you had your eyes closed, you wouldn’t necessarily know the difference. The movie stars Freeman as an old writer who’s irascible, ornery, and crabby (take your pick of adjectives), though he lightens up a little when he falls for Virginia Madsen and has to take care of three young girls. (Kenan Thompson is also around.) Through it all, Freeman talks in folksy apohrisms like, “Right now I’m seeing things with a clear eye, and frankly, I like the viewâ€; the result is a movie that feels like he’s narrating his cannily scripted internal monologue, with nary a penguin or prison in sight.
