Rusty Duritz: How old are you?
Russ Duritz: Forty. In a couple days.
Rusty Duritz: That is old! I'm turning eight. In a couple days.
Russ Duritz: Eight. You're eight. I'm eight.
Rusty Duritz: This is scary.
Russ Duritz: No. This is hilarious.
While watching this family movie, I couldn't help thinking of a friend I have--call him Fred. Fred teaches social studies in junior high school and hates himself. Not that teaching in a public school should be considered demeaning, but this guy graduated with honors from Columbia University. A reunion was coming up back in 1971, so I asked him whether he was excited. "I'm not going," he said with a grimace. "I can see myself re-introducing myself to my old classmates. Two guys are surgeons, one's a Wall Street tycoon, another is an adviser to the governor." Yeah, so? I asked. "So they'll ask me what I do, and I'll say I teach history at JHS 224 in Brooklyn. And do you know what they'll say? They'll say, 'Hey, Fred, you always were good for a few jokes. Now tell us: what do you really do?'"
Fred was indeed always good for a laugh and he told the story in a joking way, but I could see underneath his bonhomie was a sad man indeed. When he enrolled in this privileged, Ivy League institution, he wanted to be a doctor like his father, and take over the old man's Manhattan Beach (Brooklyn) practice. But he just couldn't cut the mustard. Quite a few of us are like Fred, I'll bet...we dreamed first of being firemen and cops, but then by the time high school and college rolled around, we had more lofty ambitions--doctor, lawyer, pilot, CEO. Somehow, something didn't turn out right and by the time we're forty years old we figure, that's it, this is what I'll be doing until I retire...teacher, middle management, freelance consultant.
Jon Turteltaub's "Disney's The Kid" may be made principally for the little ones but for the big guys who, like Fred, have tasted life's disappointments, the movie can hit home--even draw a tear or two in its sentimental patches. (If you're not sure they're meant to be sentimental, Marc Shaiman's soaring music will clue you in when to cry). Like "Frequency" in theme--but without Gregory Hoblit's spooky ambience--"Disney's The Kid" focuses on a 40-year-old who is not doing what he dreamed of doing. Eventually, we learn what happened to him at the age of eight that gave him a twitch in the eye and led him to become a middle-aged guy without a wife, with few if any real friends, and worst of all, without even a dog. We learn at the same time as this man, Russ Duritz (Bruce Willis), because a spot of magic has Russ meet up with himself at eight years of age when he was called Rusty (Spencer Breslin). Yep: little Rusty appears without even a clap of thunder or a bolt of lightning, and for the next week or so they bond and learn. The kid learns what will become of him. The dad finds out where he went wrong.
Although Russ surrendered his childhood dream, we may find it difficult to be sympathetic. After all the guy has a spacious home housing a brand-new shiny black Porsche and is the owner of a public relations firm with himself as "image maker" with clients like the state's governor, the city's mayor, various executives looking to improve the way they come across in public. He even gives pro bono advice to an anchorwoman on the eleven o'clock news whom he takes on briefly while they are seatmates in first class, advising her to shorten both her hair and her nails. For those of us ordinary guys who like to think that money can't buy happiness, this movie is a godsend because if you buy that premise, you might think that maybe even Bruce Willis--who made $54.5 million last year to put himself at the numero uno position among actors--might be a tad unhappy.
Bruce Willis acts out Audrey Wells's clever, though never really hilarious script in such a way that we're never convinced that he was ever a jerk--not now, not thirty-two years ago. For that, you'd have to substitute Steve Martin for Willis. Even pudgy Spencer Breslin in the role of Russ thirty- two years ago is just too smart, too boisterous to convince us that the guy was ever a jerk. Sure, the kid was beaten up at recess time by a big bully, and sure, the little guy is subject to a pratfall or two, but a loser? No way. Nonetheless as the well-heeled, well-trimmed Russ (Willis lost quite a bit of weight for the role) watches himself as a boy, he does realize that he was always smarter than most and that with some more confidence and less weight and perhaps a few boxing lessons from a champ like Kenny (Chi McBride), he would have grown up to become that pilot and would understand why his dad often treated him so harshly that he took on a permanent twitch in his eye.
Spencer Breslin as the kid is obviously at home as an actor, having begun his career at age 3 and has since been in 50 TV commercials. (He's the guy who would recite the "two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun") but after a while his rambunctiousness and in-your-face assertiveness becomes grating. Russ's relationship with Amy (Emily Mortimer) doesn't look real and in fact the news anchorwoman played by Jean Smart would be more of the right match for him. Lily Tomlin, however, is well cast as Russ's assistant, Janet, the kid of helper that any boss would love to have--efficient, funny, able to talk back to the taskmaster as though she were an equal. As a whole, the picture is probably over the heads of the targeted audience who may not really understand what is at stake here but at the same time has reasonable appeal for adults who had to give up their own dreams. Once again, though, isn't it difficult to sympathize with a guy who has everything--looks, physique, profession, sports car, a pad that could cover the pages of Architectural Digest--and who could easily pick up a dog and a lovely mate for the asking--but who missed out on becoming a pilot?
By : Harvey S. Karten
Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating: 3
The superfluously titled "Disney's The Kid" is a spin on one of the late-'80s most recycled premises, in which a character transforms from a child into a child in an adult's body overnight (1988's "Big"), or the souls of parent and child switch places (1987's "Like Father, Like Son," 1988's "Vice Versa"). The hook this time is that there is no role reversals or character switches, but that the adult and child versions of the same man come face-to-face. Bearing a striking resemblance in many ways to Penny Marshall's wonderfully magical "Big," it is easy to see how, with special handling and care, "Disney's The Kid" might have been able to rise to the former picture's level. Unfortunately, due to director Jon Turteltaub's and screenwriter Audrey Wells' syrupy treatment, both of whom stubbornly struggle at nearly every turn to make the film one children would be entertained through-and-through at, they botch the film's ambitious chances at greatness.
Like a train traveling full speed down a railroad track, Turteltaub's idea of making a successful children's fantasy is to keep moving, moving, moving, without pausing long enough to take a breather and getting to know the characters onscreen a little better. In fact, "Disney's The Kid" is almost annoying in the way it has been so obviously dumbed down in order to please the little kiddies in the audience and make a quick buck (that's Disney, for you).
Nearing his 40th birthday, Russ Duritz (Bruce Willis) is a workaholic image consultant who cares about little else other than himself, including his long-suffering partner and quasi-girlfriend Amy (Emily Mortimer). Following eerie instances in which he keeps imagining seeing a shiny, red plane flying in the air, and, at one point, follows a young child who was seen trespassing on his property into a restaurant, only for it to disappear into thin air after exiting the building, Russ suspects that he may be having a psychological issue.
That's when the precocious 8-year-old Russ Duritz (Spencer Breslin) shows up, unsure how he got where he is but inexplicably linked to his grumpy 40-year-old self. This time, however, Russ is relieved to learn that his personal assistant, Janet (Lily Tomlin), and Amy can also see the child, and becomes convinced that the chubby, little "Rusty" was brought here so that he can help him out with his own image, which cost him a fair amount of heartache throughout his school years. The more the two bond, though, the more the adult Russ starts to remember about a portion of his childhood that he has since blocked out, as it becomes increasingly clear the younger Russ appeared to help him come to terms with the one event in his life that changed him from an innocent boy into a hard-edged, unhappy man.
"Disney's The Kid" is a plodding motion picture whose blueprint is fundamentally predictable, causing an absence of interest to be invested into the plot particulars. Acquiring a troubling headache is another story altogether, as there is so much yelling and repetition in the opening half that it begins to get on your nerves. The last 45 minutes are more surprising, as the film slows down its quick pace to nowhere and gets a little serious. Without discussing the particulars, both versions of Russ find themselves facing the turning point in their life that changed them, and know that if they don't recognize the problem the second time around, their ill-omened future will be unavoidable.
In recent years, Bruce Willis has truly been branching out as an actor, appearing in everything from a horror film (1999's "The Sixth Sense"), to action (1998's "Armageddon"), to quirky comedy (1999's "Breakfast of Champions"), to screwball comedy (2000's "The Whole Nine Yards"), to human drama (1999's "The Story of Us"), to a family picture ("Disney's The Kid"). After years of being labeled little other than an action star, Willis has had a major career turnabout, proving that he is not only serious about his profession, but a fine actor, indeed. As the patronizing Russ Duritz, whose completely lost all signs of wide-eyed innocence and youth, Willis gives a genuinely touching performance. His counterpart, newcomer Spencer Breslin, is brightly unaffected, abandoning few signs of being an unctuous child actor.
As Amy, Russ' potential love interest, Emily Mortimer (2000's "Scream 3") sparkles. A natural talent and beauty, Mortimer gives Amy a much-needed warm-heartedness that balances out the cold Russ. The irreplaceable Lily Tomlin is also on hand in the underwritten role of Janet, Russ' assistant, and while she gives it her all and stands out in her few scenes, Tomlin is honestly too good to be wasting her time in throwaway parts like this. Finally, Jean Smart is a vibrant standout, developing her character of Deirdre, an aspiring newsanchor with an unexpected human connection to Russ, with an added level of realism that is truly refreshing.
When the climax finally arrived, it required a hint of subtle, yet powerful, resonance, much like "Big" did, and achieved. Ultimately, "Disney's The Kid" is rarely ever discreet in its emotions, and the finale is hampered, like much of what came before, by being just too cute and gushy for its own good. The final scene, between Russ and Amy, and played effectively to the tune, "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," on the other hand, does hold the subtlety required, and ends on a strong note. But the damage had already been done. Throughout "Disney's The Kid," I couldn't help but imagine how the film might have been drastically altered had only the cloying music score, by Marc Shaiman, been changed from its current kiddie origins to something more sophisticated and refined. In retrospect, the misguided score might have been all that needed to be modified for a mediocre film to be a good one. At every turn, "Disney's The Kid" screams out for that special, gentle touch, and the filmmakers sadly never realize it. Or maybe they just didn't care.
