- Culture
- 02 Apr 13
Family film aims for simplicity, becomes non-entity...
Disney’s family flick is based on a “concept” by Ahmet Zappa and it shows. Rarely has a potential tugger of heart-strings been so thinly scripted and poorly fleshed-out. The film is emotionally manipulative, unoriginal and white-washed with Disney’s usual attractive, interchangeable Caucasian Middle Americans.
However, sheer lack of substance makes it difficult to even rail against its faults. The film offers the bare bones of a story, and a great big pumping Hallmark heart – but nobody to make use of either. A fairytale premise sees bland childless couple Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton ‘magically’ grow their ideal sprog. As Timothy, young CJ Adams is cute but given shockingly little dialogue. His supposedly meaningful connections with the community, particularly beautiful classmate Odeya Rush, feel meaningless. It’s clear Timothy Green has limited time to use his guileless charm to transform those around him into nicer people. He had one hundred minutes with me, and it didn’t work.