To sum up, The Kid is a cute movie with some good messaging about not letting all the important things in life pass you by, and that having a successful career does not mean you have a successful life. The movie is often amusing, sometimes poignant, and an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.
On Sunday night we watched the movie The Kid, which was released by Disney in 2000. I'm pretty sure that this was the first time I've seen it since that year. The Kid stars Bruce Willis as Russ Duritz, a cynical image consultant who has made a career- and a fortune- rehabilitating the tarnished images of his high profile- and frequently sleazy- clients. On the eve of his 40th birthday, Russ is successful in his career, but a failure in his personal life. He works constantly, has employees but not friends, has pushed his family away, and keeps sabotaging his relationship with the woman who is- reluctantly- in love with him. Suddenly, a couple days before his birthday, Russ is alarmed when he starts repeatedly seeing a young boy in various places. At first he thinks that it's an hallucination and that the stress of his job is making him crack up, but then realizes that other people can see the child, too. It turns out that the boy is Russ' eight year old self, somehow sent to the future for some unknown purpose. Young Russ is just as bewildered and dismayed as Older Russ, though for different reasons. Older Russ looks at the boy and only sees the unpopular, overweight, geeky dweeb he was as a child. Young Russ looks at his future self and sees that he has done nothing of the things he dreams of doing, doesn't have a family, and doesn't even own a dog. As he observes in disgust, "I grow up to be a loser." Russ- young and old- must figure out why young Russ is there and how to send him back while confronting the failures of his personal life which is empty and emotionally barren. They figure out that the key is an event which happened in Russ' past, but there's a problem... it hasn't happened to young Russ yet, and Older Russ has blocked most of his childhood memories and can't remember the incident. Further shenanigans ensue as they try to work out what it was and how to reverse it. The Kid is a fine, family-friendly movie which is sometimes genuinely funny, and sometimes genuinely touching. It's occasionally a little cheese-y, but not overwhelmingly so. The film is fortunate in its cast: Lily Tomlin is quite amusing as Russ' sarcastic, long-suffering secretary. And Bruce Willis does a fine job playing against type as the bitter consultant Russ who has hidden his insecurities under a shell of success and hardened cynicism. Emily Mortimer is okay as Russ' assistant/ love interest, though not outstanding, but she's not given a lot to work with. She's mostly a satellite character, there to react to events rather than effect them. By far the best performance is turned in by Spencer Breslin who plays young Russ, or Rusty. I often find myself disliking the way kids are portrayed in movies- either as impossibly smart and good, or impossibly precocious and obnoxious. Both annoy me considerably. But young Breslin is great at portraying Rusty in a much more realistic- and likable- manner. Neither outstandingly brilliant or off-puttingly dumb, he comes across as a genuine kid, able to melt your heart one minute and drive you crazy the next. As to the plot well, there are no surprises here; you always know where the film is going if not how it's going to get there. Time travel is never explained very well in movies, so maybe it's just as well that The Kid doesn't even try. We find out why Rusty has been sent from the past, but never how. We are vaguely aware that it has something to do with this Skyway Diner, which keeps featuring in important scenes, but the film never gives an explanation for it. To sum up, The Kid is a cute movie with some good messaging about not letting all the important things in life pass you by, and that having a successful career does not mean you have a successful life. The movie is often amusing, sometimes poignant, and an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.
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