Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.16.17
Films don’t surprise me much any
more.
This one did.
The Book of Henry is a captivating convergence of
premise, cast and execution: a beguiling “little” drama filled with big ideas,
carefully shepherded by a director and writer who maintain unerring control
throughout.
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| While Mom's away, the boys will play: Armed with a vacuum cleaner, toilet plungers, goggles and gallons of packing "peanuts," Henry (Jaeden Lieberher, left) does his best to put a smile on the face of younger brother Peter (Jacob Tremblay). |
Trust is in short supply these
days, from all sorts of quarters. It seems like people and things too
frequently disappoint us, and that’s equally true of films that betray our faith
and intelligence. Not so The Book of
Henry. Barely half an hour in, it became clear that scripter Gregg Hurwitz
wasn’t going to miss a step with his enchanting narrative, and that director
Colin Trevorrow’s guiding hand would monitor all the elements with the
precision of the Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions concocted by the story’s
title character.
In short, I gave my trust to
Hurwitz and Trevorrow, and they didn’t let me down.
Eleven-year-old Henry (Jaeden
Lieberher) shares a bedroom with his younger brother Peter (Jacob Tremblay) in
a pastoral suburban town in upstate New York. Their mother Susan (Naomi Watts),
a single parent, toils as a waitress at a tiny diner, alongside co-waitress and
feisty family friend Sheila (Sarah Silverman).
Susan is forgetful, immature and
only mildly educated: still stuck in post-adolescence, all these years later,
and more big sister than parent. The preternaturally serious Henry, in stark
contrast, has the family well in hand; he’s charismatic, shrewdly intuitive and
super-smart. (He prefers the term “precocious.”)
On a typical weekday evening,
Susan spends hours playing video games; Henry sits quietly at a table, paying
all the bills and keeping an eye on the stock market.
He also keeps an eye on Christina
(Maddie Ziegler), the girl next door who sits at an adjacent desk in his
classroom. Normally a friendly, cheerful lass, of late she has grown quiet and
withdrawn, frequently half-concealing her face beneath her hair. Her
step-father Glenn (Dean Norris) — also a single parent, and the local police
chief — seems ... well ... tightly wound.
All three kids are creative.
Christina dances; Henry and Peter spend lots of time in their tree house, in
the woods behind their home. This kids’ heaven has been assembled from all
manner of found materials — no doubt engineered by Henry — and filled with
toys, gadgets and discarded junk waiting to be transformed into something
spectacular. Best touch: the tree house entrance is a re-purposed refrigerator
door, complete with bottles held within its shelves.
