| The actor who played the boy is T.J. Lowther. You will be seeing more
of him in future films. He has a great face and is a good little
actor.
I also agree with the two previous notes: the film was very good, not
simplified or overdone. Costner's acting was the best I have seen from
him, and as mentioned before, Eastwood's acting was very minimalist,
almost as if he took himself out of the spotlight and let it be
Costner's film.
I would give this film a four-star review.
Keith
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| I'm going against the grain on this one. A Perfect World was far from
a perfect movie. About an hour too long, the movie runs almost 2.5
hours and loses its way after 30 minutes, turning from an interesting
character study/bonding film to a preachy, aimless, cliche-filled
chase movie where almost all the characters could be described as
either stereotypical or just plain boring.
As mentioned previously, the film stars Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood
and Laura Dern.
Eastwood and Dern are in the movie to provide what little insight we
get on Costner's character without having to have Costner's character
(Butch) stand there and say it. ("When I was eight....") Otherwise,
they spend their time doing remarkably little to forward the plot and
remarkably a lot being (apparantly) the only Texas law enforcement
officials who don't fall into the Dumb Southern Poe-leece stereotype.
Costner is easy on the eyes, as is to be expected, and doesn't do a BAD
job with the material he's given. It's just bad material. Per Costner
norm, there isn't a lot of emotion coming out of Butch (save for a
couple times where he teeters on the emotional deep end), but he seems
likable enough. The problem is, you don't have any a better
understanding or empathy with Butch at the end of the movie than you do
at the beginning. There's just...Butch. Ta da.
The kid, well, I didn't like the kid's acting style. Twitching and
grimacing don't make up for acting out emotions. I grew quickly tired
of "Now we got to a shot of the Kid, seeing his reaction", when I knew
his reaction would be ::twitch, twitch, grimace:: I felt absolutely
nothing for this kid -- I wasn't worried about his welfare, I didn't
feel his fatherless life was particularly empty (Butch as the surrogate
father-figure, filling that niche in the Kid's life, appeared to be a
main theme of the movie), and I thought, more often than not, that he
was a bit dumb.
But he was just a kid. The adults in the film had no such excuse.
Neither did the film itself, which began to wander, drag, and spiral
lazily around in search of itself, dragging out scenes which were
already too long, pretty much replaying scenes which had already been
done, and just refuse to end when it was time to end. I left the
theatre wondering what the hell had gone wrong. All the makings were
there for a fine picture -- interesting premise, a good cast, a good
director. Just not a good film.
Bleh. The first movie in a long time that I've got mad at. ("No, no,
you EEDIOT!") :)
*.75 (for trying) out of ****
kim
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| Re .-1,
I noticed a review in our local free rag that pretty much agreed with
you. They gave it two stars out of five. They mentioned in particular
the "aimless, overdrawn" ending. Funny, having read that, I agree with
it, and with many of your comments as well. Yet there was something in
the film that stuck with me, I guess I can't figure out what. Maybe
just because it was a movie, and I don't get out to the movies much any
more. :-)
Neil
|
|
Well, even though it was a Kevin Costner movie, I watched most
of it.
And even though it was a Kevin Costner movie, I liked it. Not
sure why, though ... maybe I just liked it more than the rest
of the KC movies out there, or maybe I would have liked it any-
ways, regardless of the other stuff he's done.
I missed the first 'x' minutes of it, but I filled in what I
could [IE, he kidnapped the kid 8^)].
And Laura Dern is always a pleasure to watch.
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