Lately I’ve been watching some movies from my childhood. Considering that this is a movie about a man literally meeting his inner child, it felt appropriate to revisit.
Let’s get the bad out of the way first. The soundtrack to this movie is awful. I’m talking bad sitcom meets corny 90s flick bad. It genuinely threatens to ruin the movie at a few points. Some of the editing and directing choices are also baffling. It feels like scenes were trimmed or left on the cutting floor entirely that would have made certain moments make more sense, or any sense. The writing also flounders at times.
How then (I hear you ask) does this movie manage 3 stars from yours truly? I’ll tell you. It comes down to two things.
First, Bruce Willis and Spencer Breslin have genuinely great chemistry. You really do buy that this is a 40 year old man and his 8 year old self interacting. I’m willing to chalk the minor flubs in their performances up to bad direction. Bruce Willis in particular manages to convey a lot of emotion with looks and pauses.
Second, and this is really carrying the weight here, the final act of this movie is quite good. There were times in the first hour that I was tempted to just turn the damn thing off, but I seemed to recall something in the ending that made me want to stick around. I was right.
Bruce spends most of the movie convinced this kid has shown up because the kid needs help. He needs to figure out how to not be a loser. At one point he thinks he’s helped his younger self change a bad event from the past, and maybe he won’t turn out to be a loser after all. But then he remembers. That wasn’t the bad thing, it was the preamble to a worse thing. And the movie doesn’t change the past. He sees his younger self go through the worst day of his young life, and the most the kid gets is a hug from his older self and a promise that things will eventually be okay. I found that to be genuinely moving. The past is over. It’s the present that needs to change.
Anyway, I guess I can’t really recommend this movie to anyone. In all honesty it’s really inconsistent and probably doesn’t deserve a 6/10. But screw it. It’s my review and I’ll do what I want. Give my inner child a break.
Lately I’ve been watching some movies from my childhood. Considering that this is a movie about a man literally meeting his inner child, it felt appropriate to revisit.
Let’s get the bad out of the way first. The soundtrack to this movie is awful. I’m talking bad sitcom meets corny 90s flick bad. It genuinely threatens to ruin the movie at a few points. Some of the editing and directing choices are also baffling. It feels like scenes were trimmed or left on the cutting floor entirely that would have made certain moments make more sense, or any sense. The writing also flounders at times.
How then (I hear you ask) does this movie manage 3 stars from yours truly? I’ll tell you. It comes down to two things.
First, Bruce Willis and Spencer Breslin have genuinely great chemistry. You really do buy that this is a 40 year old man and his 8 year old self interacting. I’m willing to chalk the minor flubs in their performances up to bad direction. Bruce Willis in particular manages to convey a lot of emotion with looks and pauses.
Second, and this is really carrying the weight here, the final act of this movie is quite good. There were times in the first hour that I was tempted to just turn the damn thing off, but I seemed to recall something in the ending that made me want to stick around. I was right.
Bruce spends most of the movie convinced this kid has shown up because the kid needs help. He needs to figure out how to not be a loser. At one point he thinks he’s helped his younger self change a bad event from the past, and maybe he won’t turn out to be a loser after all. But then he remembers. That wasn’t the bad thing, it was the preamble to a worse thing. And the movie doesn’t change the past. He sees his younger self go through the worst day of his young life, and the most the kid gets is a hug from his older self and a promise that things will eventually be okay. I found that to be genuinely moving. The past is over. It’s the present that needs to change.
Anyway, I guess I can’t really recommend this movie to anyone. In all honesty it’s really inconsistent and probably doesn’t deserve a 6/10. But screw it. It’s my review and I’ll do what I want. Give my inner child a break.
