Walk the -- Plank?

ok, so i may be the only human to not like 'Walk the Line', the pseudo-biopic of the late great johnny cash and his relationship with june carter cash.

to be sure, both joaquin phoenix and reece witherspoon were virtuoso. splendid performances.

but i felt the film as a whole lacked what johnny cash was so so good at: wonderfully crafted story-telling. i understand that the film was more a story of the relationship of johnny cash and june carter, and i appreciated it as such. but it failed, in my opinion, to push beyond the superficial platitudes and observations that come with the recounting of any love story. too much was glossed over or skipped altogether. for instance, i presume that johnny and june had many deep, depth-plumbing conversations about life -- about his father, his brother's death, his mother's quiet obeyance -- conversations that made them, in his own words, "best friends." but none of that was there. instead, their relationship is depicted almost solely as it was on tour, which of course means the focus was more on performance.

and i guess that's my point: i feel that the film performed an idea of what the cash-carter relationship was like -- but it performed it as though it had only really learned the steps of the dance and not the dance itself. this is not to fault witherspoon or phoenix. they transcended the film's faults and, really, were the only things that made it an average studio film, and not a lifetime movie made for TV.