“Will you say multi-dextrose for me again? It’s too cute.”

I really expected this to be an intolerable nightmare saved only by Elle Fanning, so I was pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing through it a lot more than is probably acceptable, even a couple of l’il tears in my eyes in places. Angelica Huston is practically perfect if a little familiar (she even gets a similar ending here to her character in Ever After) as the evil headmistress of a first class pre-school trying to thwart the relatively restrained Eddie Murphy’s attempts to start a more homely form of daycare, and Lacey Chabert is fun as her sidekick. The kids are adorable almost without exception – they all have their “moments”, particularly at the end when announcing to parents being shown around Huston’s school how they’ve benefited from the daddy day care. Steve Zahn is perfect as a Trekkie who’s able to handle the kids better than anybody since he accidentally read Dr. Spock’s Baby and Childcare.

The movie’s mood veers effortlessly from toilet humour that threatens to go too far at times yet never does and is actually surprisingly effective (“I missed!”) through to pure schmaltz and heartstring tuggery. For family entertainment, I found it almost literally bang in between the astonishing R.V. and the abysmal Yours, Mine and Ours that it most resembles … I don’t know what that means to anyone else, but to me it means I really have no objections, I loved it.

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.

Nice long first review below so I don’t feel compelled to say too much here this time but to mention how surprised I was that it worked so well a second time. The ending here is probably seen as particularly corny to some, and when I first saw it though it really overwhelmed me I wasn’t sure if it’d just caught me at the right time. I think the reason it looks like it’s actually going to work for me any number of times I see it now comes down to two things: the line that precedes it from the boy, “But this is my story, and this is where I want it to end …”, and all that water. The movie comes down to a child’s hope and water: how beautifully simple can you get? I should also repeat the fact that I should really watch this movie before and after anything featuring James Nesbitt – I’ve really grown to dislike him recently, mostly over the casting of him in the BBC’s “Passion” as Pontius Pilate … but he really is quite amazing here.

September 6th, 2007:

Absolute genius. A quintessential children’s movie (okay, it’s a 12A in the UK, I don’t agree; it gets a little scary towards the end but this so fits the bill alongside old children’s classics that I think it should almost be a U) and a quintessential British movie – addressing poverty, class, religion, the ethnic minorities, all those lovely things – in one. Not to mention the fact it remains at all turns, absolutely, a Danny Boyle film. I’ve yet to see Sunshine, but on the evidence up to now, I’ve got to say, surely Boyle is one of the most consistently brilliant directors not only in the UK but in the whole field.

The basic story is that a few weeks before the UK switches from Pound Sterling to Euros, a young boy discovers a bag stuffed with hundreds of thousands (not millions, but hey, what’s the difference to a child?) and must therefore decide what to do with it before it becomes worthless. If movies like Brewster’s Millions and Blank Cheque come to mind with that set-up, you couldn’t be further off. While all around him seem obsessed to the point of stereotype with football, the kid in question here has this obsession with Catholic Saints reminiscent of Winona Ryder’s character in Mermaids ... he even thinks he can see and talk to them at times (leading to hilarious moments when one of said Saints drops into his cardboard house by the railway for a sneaky joint, lol; or the Geordie Saint Peter telling him, “For Christ’s sake don’t tick them little boxes,” as the kid attempts to send the money to various charities). Against all odds, this kid wants to do good with this money, and is amazed at how hard that is.

I was hooked on this from the moment the Danny Elfman-esque opening music (incidentally, wonderful score all the way through by John Murphy) – coupled with some CGI of a new housing estate being constructed, a bit reminiscent of a Barratt commercial actually, but bizarrely beautiful – struck up, and it only got better from there. It never took the directions I thought it would. At times it’s similar to child fantasy movies like Lawn Dogs or Paperhouse; at times, the influence of much older, earthier things like Whistle Down the Wind is more evident (I have in mind in particular the scenes where the kid and his brother are introducing their school peers to the money; and the long line of homeless people following them to Pizza Hut).

It’s a mesmerising, beautiful movie with much to say about childhood and the state of the world, perhaps best captured best in the abandoned way the hero says to his dad at the end, “Everyone gets robbed at Christmas, dad.” Incidentally, major kudos has to be given to James Nesbitt here. Though I think he’s really talented, he normally manages to do something to annoy me; here, he not only didn’t do that, but he manages to cover up his seemingly uncoverable accent; Daisy Donovan is a delight, too, I had no idea she could act. The kids, it has to be said, aren’t fantastic; but it’s clear that Boyle has almost used their weaknesses to his advantage; again, it’s almost like watching a much older production. This is really a gem, and possible Boyle’s best movie to date.

“The Devil goes after the young. Those who cannot fend for themselves.”

You said it, Miss Fischer …

You kind of get the gist of where this documentary is going early on, when evangelist leader Becky Fischer asks a crowd of parents and children, “who believes God can do anything?” and we see one mother forcing the hands of her two kids – who don’t look old enough to even raise their own hands on command let alone have such an opinion – in the air.

It’s hard to write a lot on this documentary, or any like it, without spilling over into a mess of a babble on the contentious issues and one’s own opinion on it rather than focusing on the basic film-making quality, such are the touchy topics it covers.

In a nutshell, this movie shows a pretty intense “camp” – a training ground for young evangelists where I guess the highlight is Fischer talking about Harry Potter, referring to him as a warlock, and therefore he makes the baby Jesus cry.

But apparently Fischer isn’t as upset about the movie as you’d expect from the picture it paints – I read on Wikipedia, “To Fischer, the real message of Jesus Camp is to show how passionate children can be when given the right opportunities.” Right. And there are moments here where the pendulum does swing her way, you do see good things coming out of it; one girl, for example, has unbelievable strength against the obvious taunts she gets at school for her beliefs etc. But, y’know, as to the passion thing? You could get that by giving them large quantities of junk food too. It doesn’t make it good. Like a radio DJ – the only real voice in the movie that calls a spade a spade and tells her how crazy she is, since you really don’t need any voice but her own to tell you that – tells her over the phone, you can get kids to do anything, you can turn them into soldiers, anything. Now I guess the argument for Fischer in answer to that is – well, at least she’s not doing that. The worst most of these kids are ever gonna really do is annoy people. It could be worse. But it’s still incredibly sad to see kids – at times, incredibly smart kids – basically having their lives snatched away from them in the name of God.

I don’t have problems with other people’s beliefs, and I’m sure for some of these kids whatever the camp leaves them with might be much better than any other alternatives. But anything that teaches, nay forces, children so young to be so certain about something which, by its very nature, is forever uncertain – that’s what bugs me the most.

As to the film itself, it is certainly well-made, arresting, and at only 90 minutes, refreshingly short for a documentary. Like I said, really only the DJ flat-out “makes a case” either way for or against Fischer, she pretty much damns herself. There’s no narration and only a few snippets of text impart basic pieces of information about locations and names etc. There’s really not a lot of gimmickery involved. It’s what I’d call “a proper documentary”, and it’s pretty scary.