3.5 stars. Rating: PG, and needlessly, for mild (and fleeting) profanity
By Derrick Bang
Peter Hedges makes delightfully
idiosyncratic films about socially awkward and mildly eccentric characters
somewhat out of step with the real world: people not quite in synch with the
rest of us, and unable to figure out how to bridge that divide.
 |
| Rather perplexed by the ivy-esque leaves that appear to be fastened to the lower legs of the mysterious boy (Cameron "CJ" Adams) who entered their lives as in answer to a prayer, Cindy (Jennifer Garner) and Jim (Joel Edgerton, far right) bring the little guy to a horticulturist (Lin-Manuel Miranda). He offer to clip off the leaves ... a suggestion that we just know is misguided. |
Hedges doesn’t work quickly; he
came to our attention back in 1993, when he adapted his own novel, What’s
Eating Gilbert Grape, for director Lasse Hallström. He followed that with
adaptations of two books by other authors — Jane Hamilton’s A Map of the
World and Nick Hornby’s About a Boy (the latter earning Hedges an Academy
Award nomination) — before taking the director’s chair for his next project,
2003’s Pieces of April.
Aside from giving Katie Holmes
her best role to date — and bringing co-star Patricia Clarkson an Oscar
nomination for supporting actress — Pieces of April established Hedges as a
writer/director with a fondness for wayward souls, and a solid sense of the way
people interact with each other. His next project, the 2007 romantic comedy Dan in Real Life, remains my favorite Steve Carell film.
All of which brings us to the
aptly titled The Odd Life of Timothy Green, a delicate, poignant little
fantasy that I suspect will have trouble finding an audience during these
noisy, action-oriented summer months. Timothy Green feels like a story that
might have been spun by the Brothers Grimm, were they among us today; this is a
fairy tale with a gentle message, and characters whose lives are changed by the
intervention of a supernatural being straight out of wish-fulfillment dreams.
The story is credited to Ahmet
Zappa, a low-profile actor making an intriguing writing debut; Hedges directed
and supplied the script. The result is whimsical, charming and completely
preposterous ... and that latter attribute is somewhat at odds with Hedges’
traditional strengths.
Because this narrative can’t
possibly take place in our world, despite his insistence that it’s doing
precisely that.
Cindy and Jim Green (Jennifer
Garner and Joel Edgerton) live in the small town of Stanleyville, known as “the
pencil capital of the world.” Unfortunately, the growing proliferation of
computers, iPhones and the like have greatly diminished the demand for pencils,
and plant employees keep expecting manager Franklin Crudstaff (Ron Livingston)
to announce cutbacks and layoffs.
On a more intimate level, Cindy
and Jim have tried for years to have children, to no avail. After exhausting
the final medical options, they quietly mourn over a bottle of wine and
contemplate the child they might have
had, jotting personality traits and various stray thoughts onto slips of paper.
This heartbreaking process concludes when they gather all the slips into a
small box, and bury it — with their shattered hopes — in Cindy’s vegetable
garden.
Cue a mysterious storm, which
somehow dumps rain only on their house. Blasted awake by the downpour, Cindy
and Jim are astonished to discover a muddy, naked but oddly cheerful adolescent
boy in their house. He introduces himself as Timothy (Cameron “CJ” Adams): the
name they would have given a son.
And — oh, yes — the boy has
ivy-esque leaves on both his legs, just above the ankles. And they’re attached
quite firmly.
Cindy and Jim adjust to this
newcomer’s arrival rather swiftly, all things considered; the tone is set when
they decide that Timothy must be “meant” for them. Don’t look a gift horse in
the mouth, and so forth. Besides, the kid is an ingenuous little charmer ...
and the leaves can be covered with long socks.
What follows (ahem) takes a leaf
from the Pollyanna template, with a “magic child” bringing positive change
not only to his new parents, but also Stanleyville at large: everybody from
grumpy Ms. Crudstaff (Dianne Wiest), Cindy’s boss at the tiny Stanleyville
Museum; to Joni (Odeya Rush), an exotic, slightly older girl who views herself
as “different,” just like Timothy.
He IS an odd duck, and not just
for the obvious reasons known only by Cindy and Jim. Timothy arrives with the
awareness and intelligence of a typical adolescent, but without much in the way
of social skills; he therefore becomes an easy target for Franklin Crudstaff’s
bratty sons. The story’s gentle humor derives from Cindy and Jim’s hapless,
hopeless efforts at spontaneous parenthood, along with the impact that the
guileless Timothy has on most adults.
Many of these interactions are
charming, in great part because Adams is such a sweet, radiant presence; Hedges
draws just the right blend of naturalism and otherworldliness from his young
star. The three-way dynamic between Adams, Garner and Edgerton also is handled
well. As she demonstrated in Juno and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Garner
has a smooth facility for light comedy, particularly when her lines have a
touch of bite.
Similarly, the scenes between
Adams and Rush feel just right, as Timothy and Joni stumble their way into a
friendship that — maybe, perhaps — might blossom into something more. The
Israeli-born Rush is strikingly exotic, which is appropriate for Joni’s role as
an outsider, and the two children bond in a manner that looks and sounds
authentic ... and is too sweet for words.
Unfortunately, Hedges doesn’t
take equal care with this story’s other key players. Rosemarie DeWitt,
co-starring as Cindy’s sister, Brenda, struggles upstream against the demands
of this character’s bitchy, condescending behavior. I’ve no idea why Brenda is
such a passive/aggressive shrew, and neither does Hedges; he never takes that
subplot anywhere.
The entire film unfolds as an
extended flashback, as told by Jim and Cindy to a dubious adoption agent
(Shohreh Aghdashloo). This framing device, anchored even more firmly in our
real world, doesn’t work at all; every time Hedges cuts back to this office,
with Jim and Cindy supplying the next improbable detail, we’re completely
ripped away from the fragile nuances of the core narrative.
Finally, Jim has issues with his
father (David Morse), a bullying “man’s man” whose approach to a friendly game
of dodge ball qualifies as child abuse: a miscalculation from which his
character never recovers. We also don’t get sufficient closure to the estranged
relationship between these two men.
Hedges apparently expects us to
be so enchanted by this story’s premise, and by Timothy himself — and the
slowly developing crisis signaled by increasingly ominous undertones in Geoff
Zanelli’s score — that we’ll overlook all these other pesky details.
I wish I could say that were
true, because there’s much to admire about The Odd Life of Timothy Green. It’s not easy to pull off this sort of fantasy, and Hedges comes achingly close
at times. In the final analysis, though, this film is less than the sum of its
often beguiling parts. When such material misses, it collapses beneath overly
soggy sentiment ... and that, sadly, is the disappointing feeling that I
suspect will accompany most viewers, as they depart the theater.
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