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Simon Birch review by Kurtz
Goodbye Owen, hello Simon.
(1) of (1) members found this review helpful.
Aaagh! Writer/ director Mark Stephen Johnson tackles one of my favourite books and rips out its dark, sprawling heart in order to make undemanding Sunday afternoon fare with schmaltz overload. The whole point about John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany” is that it’s an unsentimental yet affecting chronicle of the tiny disabled hero’s life. In the film he’s elevated to a junior Jesus character (actually playing the holy infant in the school nativity play) who occasionally reminds the other rather mystified characters that God has a plan for him. The nativity play (amusing) and the fateful climax (lame) are all inventions of Johnson’s and Irving was apparently so horrified at what had been done to his book that he demanded that the main character’s name be changed and that the opening credits state that the film is “Suggested by” the book and not “Based on.. Still, it looks very nice in a “Stand by Me” kind of a way, the kid actors are good and isn’t it gratifying to see actors like Platt, Judd and Jim Carrey getting well paid for undemanding work?
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