| Saw this Saturday night. I found it funny and touching, and will probably see
it again on video one of these years.
The movie is based on a true story and takes place in the early(?) 60's in LA.
It centers around Steven, a 12 year old boy whose mother, early in the movie,
is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. His father, an manic amateur inventor (with a
day job off-screen) becomes so consumed in caring for his dying wife that he
shuts himself off from his children, and Steven runs away from home to live
with his two paternal uncles, who are - not quirky, not lovably eccentric,
but borderline insane . One of them is a shambling junk collector, the other a
raving left-wing paranoid. They try, in their way, to raise him, and the movie
follows his life through the next few months.
The acting and directing are uniformly good; even Andie MacDowell does well as
the mother, but it was hard to believe she was dying (guess she wasn't willing
to do a Tom Hanks and drop 30 pounds during filming).
Worth seeing.
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