Larry Cook, a prosperous farmer in Iowa, decides to retire and split his acres of land among his three daughters, Ginny, Rose and Caroline.

The website's critical consensus reads "A Thousand Acres makes disappointingly sudsy stuff out of the source material, but benefits from solid performances by a strong cast.

"[6] Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "A Thousand Acres is an ungainly, undigested assembly of 'women's issues,' milling about within a half-baked retread of King Lear.

The film's standout perf, meanwhile, comes from Keith Carradine, who takes the relatively small role of Ginny's husband and manages to give it a degree of shading and dignity-unto-desperation.

"[10] Rita Kempley wrote in The Washington Post: "Jane Smiley's novel A Thousand Acres has been called "King Lear in the cornfields," but the eagerly awaited screen adaptation is but a skeletal litany of miscarriages, mastectomies, sexual abuse, public humiliations and private betrayals.

While she uses much of Smiley's dialogue verbatim and includes some of her lovely prose in Jessica Lange's narration, this meditation on the erosion of the family farm and the patriarchy that sustained it has been translated into a feminist screed.

"[11] Time Out London wrote: "Jane Smiley's novel earned points for chutzpah, but Jocelyn Moorhouse's adaptation makes heavy weather of this latter-day King Lear.

Despite the leisurely Waltons-style voice-over, Larry Cook and his kin don't convince as a Midwestern farming dynasty, while the film itself has only a picturesque sense of the land.

"[12] Jessica Lange was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, losing to Judi Dench for her performance in Mrs.