Hey folks, Harry here. Kid movies... Ones that are set way back when... Well, they are a special and tough genre to nail dead on. Often times the kids seem forced, the writing feels too cute and the issues are never quite tough enough. Kids deal with parents that beat them, they deal with an adult world where alcoholics and drug users exist. They deal with money issues and the inability to dress as well as those kids in school. And while it can be a wonderfully innocent and happy world, it can also be tough as hell. The best of these films lay somewhere in the midst of this. Bob Clark's A CHRISTMAS STORY is absolutely fantastic, as is the recent THE IRON GIANT and THE SIXTH SENSE. Some of my faves include STAND BY ME and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, but those are awfully high company with which to guage all kid films. But... it seems this film is attempting that level of flick and while it seems Egon feels the movie isn't everything those other films are... It does succeed in telling a good story. There are spoilers below, and yes this is a movie of spoilers. Though with the kid from THE SIXTH SENSE in it, I will be there opening day. He is wonderful in that film!
Harry, my good man, it's Egon Spengler again with a review of Bob Clark's new offering I'LL REMEMBER APRIL (no, it's not a remake of an earlier film by the same title-but because of that, this one could get a new name by the time it's released).
THE GOOD NEWS: Clark has returned to what he does best, working with kids (though not babies as in BABY GENIUSES) in a period film set in a more innocent time. They don't make enough flicks like this anymore and I'm sure that everyone was hoping the director would recreate that old A CHRISTMAS STORY magic.
I'LL REMEMBER APRIL is a comedy-drama about four boys who live in a small California coastal in April 1942, so everyone is on alert about a possible Japanese invasion. The kids are group leader Duke (Trevor Morgan), his neighbor and best pal Willy (Yuki Tokuhiro), sorta dimwitted Tyler (Richard Taylor Olson) and cute little Peewee (Haley Joel Osment fresh from being numero uno at the box office with THE SIXTH SENSE…and yeah, I thought at first his named indicated that he was a nod to the main character of Clark's PORKY'S, but he has a different last name). Real-life couple Mark Harmon and Pam Dawber play Duke's parents, and Pat Morita plays Willy's grandfather.
The kids, being typical kids, take their role in the war far too seriously and patrol the shores on their bikes-until one day they actually find somebody, a Japanese sailor who has been accidentally washed overboard from a sub and now, injured, is hiding out in an abandoned factory near the beach. They debate what to do with him, but start to warm up to the guy when he saves Duke from drowning. In the meantime, Willy's family, Japanese Americans who have lived in America for several generations, is facing anti-Japanese racism and waiting to hear about their relocation to an internment camp.
After it's set up, the film follows a predictable path, which isn't too upsetting for a film that's obviously geared toward kids. The racism element heats up while Duke faces a touch choice about his Japanese "prisoner" when his older brother is badly hurt in Bataan, casting a different light on a war that up to now has been a lot of fun for the kids.
THE BAD NEWS: It seems the filmmakers are purposely drawing obvious comparisons in order to get people interested in it, but I'LL REMEMBER APRIL suffers by comparison to A CHRISTMAS STORY. It's nowhere near as sharp.
A CHRISTMAS STORY is justifiably considered a classic because it contains so many dead-on observations of being a kid and even the comedy (like the kid getting his tongue stuck to a frozen flag pole) is more effective because it rings so true…every scene leaves some audience member saying, "Hey, that happened to me!" A CHRISTMAS STORY feels like (and is) authentic.
I'LL REMEMBER APRIL, on the other hand, is too forced and artificial. Particularly grating is a scene where Mark Harmon addresses the town after Pat Morita's fishing boat is burned. You can really feel for the filmmakers here, they are trying to create a scene that will stand with Gregory Peck's closing summation in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD but the writing is just nowhere near that level and Harmon comes across as a strident, preachy know-it-all. It would have worked better and felt more real to have him say the same things privately to his son rather than the whole town.
There is only one element in this whole film that reminded me of Clark's best work, the fact that everyone in the neighborhood tenses up and runs home when a military vehicle is spotted coming their way…the "death cars" usually bring news of the war-related demise of a loved one. The film needed a lot more spot-on remembrances like this, for instance where are the gold stars that used to grace the front windows of houses where a family had lost someone in the war? Maybe the film's set too early in the war for those, but it's the general type of thing this movie needed a lot more of.
The tone of the film is also likely to cause problems for modern viewers, but didn't bother me. It's a very innocent, naïve little movie-but it's portraying children in a time that really was a lot more innocent and naïve, so I was able to go with it…my problems with it were mostly script problems…but a lot of people might not be able to suspend their disbelief in a more cynical, seen-it-all time.
No matter what your take on I'LL REMEMBER APRIL ends up being, you've got to admit that Clark really pulls great performances out of kids and teens, he's done it in enough films at this point that he's either a great director of young people or he has a casting person who knows what they're doing.
Egon Spengler
