woensdag 14 augustus 2013

The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012)

Genre : Comedy/Fantasy
Country : USA

Cast :
Jennifer Garner : Cindy Green
Joel Edgerton : Jim Green
Cameron 'CJ' Adams : Timothy Green

Director :
Peter hedges

Summary
After receiving bad news from a fertility doctor, Cindy and Jim Green try to bury their dreams of having a child by writing out all the great traits their child would have and putting them in a box in the garden. During a freak storm in the middle of the night, they awake to find a boy named Timothy, with leaves growing from his ankles, standing in their kitchen calling them mom and dad. Cindy and Jim are thrown into the midst of parenthood and over the coming months, Timothy will teach them more than they could have imagined about being parents and raising a child, no matter how he comes into their lives.

My opinion
Ouch Walt Disney ... and yes I immediately had a feeling that this would be a pedantic family movie with a whopper of a moral. An enormous tearjerker which will give me a flashback of 40 years ago with my sniffing sisters on a pouffe staring at a similar funeral mood movie.

But to be honest ... this film charmed me in a subtle way. The beautiful environment in which it all happened, the woods and the swirling leaves, the typical local farming village with a dying pencil factory and Pencil Museum, the social ties between the people, the snobbish irritating family and the chilly in-an-ivory-tower-living manager. This along with the lovely-looking Timothy who is super cuddly with his twinkling eyes and who appears in the lives of Cindy and Jim, a childless couple that while enjoying a glass of wine in the evening make a list of the ideal son, put it in a cigar box and plant it between the vegetables. From there, you know step by step what's going to happen, what's expected and what's the outcome ... but for once I didn't give a shit, because I enjoyed it.

A family movie that surely deserves a place in the gallery of "The better family movies ever". A smile, a tear and a sad but ultimately happy ending.
Well, the advantage of getting older is that you also can appreciate such movies.

The best and most funny moment was the prediction that Timothy, as a abominably bad soccerplayer, would score the winning goal, came true ... except on the wrong side.