Have Dreams, Will Travel
Still catching up, apologies for less than good review etc etc …
It doesn’t surprise me much now that I’ve seen this movie why it seems to be having so much trouble getting seen despite a cast led by AnnaSophia Robb and featuring small appearances from the likes of Val Kilmer (brilliant if fleeting) and Heather Graham (who quite honestly I didn’t even spot, lol). It’s a shame that it’s such a difficult movie to know “who to sell it to” – it’s certainly a children movie and children should be allowed to see it, though I’m not sure the powers that be will want them to – because it’s as beautiful if not more so than I imagined it’d be when I heard about it early last year or even late 2006.
The tagline is “You’re never too young to have a plan,” and boy, are these two kids with a plan. I mentioned when I wrote about Bad News Bears how I was sure they’d really missed a trick not casting AnnaSophia Robb in the Tatum O’Neal part when they remade it. Here, again, I’m struck by her surprising earthiness that you never really get from still or red carpet photographs of her. We meet her as her parents’ car crashes in a sleepy Texas town where a young boy lives like a ghost to his own parents. He immediately senses she’s smarter than him, though he gets the feeling she maybe screws with peoples’ heads sometimes. “I will never screw with your head,” she tells him, “ever.” And then she informs him, “I think it’s time for us to leave,” and they go, right under the nose of the boy’s father too pre-occupied with his boat in the yard.
They get married and sex is mentioned – it is in the line, “Don’t worry, I’m not ready to have sex yet,” but I just know that a lot of people won’t care about the context and will simply have a heart attack over a 13-year-old just saying the word and suggesting it’s an option, lol. There’s a great moment when they find shelter in a barn that turns out to belong to Val Kilmer (described beautifully by the boy, “He’s the nicest grown-up I’ve ever met. But I think he hates himself …”). Robb asks him what they owe him for room and board, to which the answer comes, “I think fallin’ asleep to the smell of pig shit should do it.” There’s a lot of stuff like this in the movie that makes me wonder just exactly how the movie will end up rated. Young teens definitely deserve to see it, but there are things I imagine would be cut to allow them to do so, things that need to be left in. Its morality towards the end is really difficult, like it almost turns into Heavenly Creatures and even I think some young people will need talking through it. Most adults won’t be interested in it. It’s a really unique movie, and I hate to say it ‘cos it sounds so patronising or whatever but, especially coming from America.
Of course my primary interest in the movie was AnnaSophia Robb, and she delivers a performance every bit as haunting as she did in Bridge to Terabithia. Her character takes a turn midway that gives me butterflies in my stomach every time I think about it – it’s described by the boy, “I didn’t realise it at the time, but she was starting to slip away inside herself,” and it’s so crushing. It reminded me of the scene in Stealing Home when Jodie Foster says, “I wish I could do that …” at the end of the pier. This is definitely a movie I’ll watch again and again, and if you get the chance to see it, don’t hesitate for a second.