Disney has finally come to a point in their life
where they can’t make happy-go-lucky, feel good children’s
movies anymore. In Tuck Everlasting they are not
afraid to embrace mature topics, they are not afraid to show a
little lip to the kisses in which the two main characters
engage in, and they definitely aren’t afraid to grasp the true
concept of love. The film is suitable for a child, and has a
short-running length, but the story that lies inside is one
that adults will enjoy as well; it might just be the only
kids’ movie that singles over the age of twenty-five will want
to see alone. The entire piece is full of great photography,
beautiful scenery, and the best cast I have seen in a long
time. Most everything is well done, and strangely believable;
it keeps the true beauty that the novel has continuously held
for many years.
Winnie Foster is a seventeen year-old girl who is
trapped in a life that doesn’t express her true character. Her
family is rich, so she must be perfect; she isn’t aloud to
play any type of sport because it will make her beautiful
white dresses too dirty, her mother gets mad at her when she
doesn’t wear a tightly drawn corset, to make her look thinner,
and when she hits the wrong note in the middle of a song that
she is playing on the piano in front of guests, her parents
feel utterly disturbed and embarrassed. She is an only child,
and has no brothers and sisters to interact with. There is no
freedom for her in life because she is constantly expected to
be as perfect as could be. Her guardians expect her to be the
most infallible person the world has ever seen That is, until
she comes across a boy that looks her age, in the woods that
her father owns.
The young man she comes across is named Jesse, and
he lives in the forest. When he first sees her, he feels
uncomfortable, but won’t say why. She sees that he was
drinking from a spring and asks him if she can have a small
sip, but the second after her innocent remark, he forcefully
resists and pushes her out of the way. His brother stumbles
upon them and quickly grabs her, then rushes her to their home
on horseback immediately, but she has no idea why. She finds
his whole family engaging in a very quiet quarrel, while being
held to the couch, disabling her from hearing anything. They
will not let her leave their home in fear of a mysterious
secret about the spring being unleashed, though she doesn’t
know what it is, Winnie is The Tuck’s hostage. Though most
people would feel imprisoned if they were being held a
strangers home, she likes the odd family more than her own,
and they treat her well. As the story moves on, she begins to
fall in love with the colorful character Jesse, whom she finds
by a mixture of luck and fate. After their relationship grows
deeper, he tells her the startling secret of the spring, which
I will not spoil for you.
Alexis Bledel, who plays Winnie, is a very
talented, fresh young actress. In her role she was able to
keep a great amount of wit, and reached for emotions even the
best actors and actresses don’t try to obtain. She kept a
great sense of composure in the scenes that could have gone
desperately wrong, but ended up working. Her sweet and
sensitive Disney look combined with the unleashed feeling of
her character on “The Gilmore Girls” proved for her to be the
right choice for the part. I like actresses who can speak with
such innocence, like did. We must remember that in the movie
business, we don’t have to have giant characters with
ego-inflated souls, and Ms. Bledel worked with that. The
soft-spoken dialogue that her character speaks is charming,
and is much more effective than most other young stars could
distribute.
Aside from Bledel and her co-star Jonathan
Jackson, who plays Jesse, there are three Academy Award
winners taking the supporting roles. Sissy Spacek plays Mae
Tuck, the mother of Jesse and his brother, Miles, played by
Scott Bairstow. The one thing that made her character good was
the incredible sense of realism she had, even when trying to
cover up one of the most farfetched secrets in movies today.
William Hurt plays her husband, Angus Tuck, more simply
referred to as “Tuck” himself. He doesn’t want Winnie to find
out about the spring, and is reluctant to tell anyone at all,
in fear that people will flock around his family and the
woods. Hurt’s performance was my favorite; his character has
some great philosophical dialogue that is quite admirable.
Lastly, is Ben Kingsley, who plays a man trying to hunt down
the Tuck family and steal their mysterious spring. He offers
to find Winnie when she is reported missing, in return for the
woods in which her father owns. These woods contain the
spring, so he will get what he wants both ways; the family, to
find more information about the spring holds in addition to
what he already knows, and the spring itself, so he can do
whatever he wants with it.
The only thing that I didn’t like in the film was
the unrealistic choice of costumes. The different pieces the
characters wore looked like plastic garbage and not authentic
material from the early nineteen-hundreds. The woman’s
costumes look like something you’d buy at
Party
City
store, and their corsets looked like thin, fake leather
super-glued onto cardboard. The men’s clothes look a little
better, but not much. The supposedly leather vests and pants,
look like plastic, once again; and their shirts thin, and
cheap looking, were much different than the home-made type
apparel that people would really be wearing in that time
period. This might not matter to little kids, but as I said
before, they are not exactly the targeted audience, though
thousands of them will see the film because of its “PG”
rating. Though this area is one to suffer, the beautiful,
surreal landscaping and cinematography are absolutely gorgeous
way to make up for it.
Tuck Everlasting moves quickly
through its material, with a short running length of an hour
and a half, but is able to cleverly describe all of its
features thoroughly in the small amount of time. The story,
based on the book by Natalie Babbit, is fabulous in the way it
explains a rather tall tail in such helplessness and
simplicity. With a great cast, featuring three Academy Award
winners and two younglings who have dynamite chemistry
together, the acting isn’t an area to suffer, either. The
lighting and cinematography are always stirring, to help our
minds to be further evolved in the story and to let us admire
the gorgeous scenery. Most everything works wonderfully,
except for the poor costume design, but is ultimately another
winner for the Disney franchise.
-Danny, Bucket Reviews