In Lee Jeong-hyang's The Way Home, a mute elderly woman from the country saves her snotty urbanite grandson from the scourge of bleeping electronic games and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The end. (Or something nauseatingly close to it.) As the new Korean cinema explodes with fresh talent, including the structurally innovative relationship studies of Hong Sang-soo (Turning Gate), the dark psychosexual melodramas of Kim Ki-duk (The Isle), and the visual kineticism of Lee Myung-se (Nowhere To Hide), it's telling that this slice of milquetoast is the first to get picked up by a major studio boutique. Put in the most euphemistic terms possible, the film's banal premise contains "universal themes," meaning that its sentimental clichés translate readily to all continents and cultures. A box-office smash in its home country, The Way Home has been charitably likened to Italian neo-realist classics like Umberto D. or The Bicycle Thief, which place simple, widely accessible stories in the foreground as an avenue into the social conditions that loom in the backdrop. But Lee's film reveals little beyond a codger's wariness for the modern world, leaving a soft-focus and unabashedly goopy pastoral that's neither an allegory nor an exposé–nor a particularly affecting melodrama, for that matter. In a less-than-stirring endorsement of single parenthood, a harried mother buses bratty 7-year-old Yu Seung-ho from the city to a remote rural area in the North Chungcheong province, where she passes him off to her mother (Kim Eul-boon), a mute octogenarian with a single-room cabin. Without the amenities of home, save for an electronic game and a cache of Spam, Yu's usual tantrums get worse before they get better, fueled by his grandmother's inability to raise her voice in reprisal. As Yu snubs the neighboring children, pawns a family keepsake for batteries, and screams over the non-battered chicken cooked for dinner, Kim's steadfast patience and unconditional love begin to affect his behavior. Working well with non-professional actors, many plucked from the location itself, Lee has a good feel for the languorous pace and rituals of country life, even if it serves to score a cheap broadside against corrosive urban values. But facile messages aside, The Way Home spends most of its time and energy tugging on the heartstrings with both hands, insistently and vigorously, which may account for any loud ripping sounds reverberating around the theater.