FOREVER YOUNG
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
FOREVER YOUNG is a film directed by Steve Miner, from a script by Jeffrey Abrams. It stars Mel Gibson, Elijah Wood, Isabel Glasser, George Wendt, and Jamie Lee Curtis. Rated PG.
FOREVER YOUNG is yet another reincarnation of the Rip Van Winkle theme, of which we have recently had several examples of the cryogenic type: ENCINO MAN, LATE FOR DINNER, to name two. Hackneyed as the concept is, FOREVER YOUNG manages to be fresh and interesting because of the interesting performances by Mel Gibson and the other members of the cast. Unfortunately, the director and writer made a couple of egregious mistakes in visualizing how a sleeper adapts to a changed world and how a person ages.
The best thing about FOREVER YOUNG is Mel Gibson. This is probably the romantic story that a lot of his fans have been waiting for. His acting is easy and natural, more impressive than the somewhat forced "I am an actor" approach to last year's HAMLET. The special charm he brings is the antiquated courtliness of a man from a half-century ago. His shock when he hears a respectable, single mother curse and casually discuss her lovers speaks volumes to establish his character and his fish-out-of-water situation. He is simply perfect in the part of the resuscitated test pilot searching for his past "across oceans of time," to borrow a phrase from another movie that might stand as the dark side of this one.
Gibson is supported by a first-rate cast. Elijah Wood is the fatherless boy who finds Gibson and wants to keep him with a desperation that is nearly palpable. Jamie Lee Curtis plays the mother who befriends this strange stranger and who would like to be more than just friends. Gibson's friend who originally puts him on hold is played by George Wendt (of TV's "Cheers"); it is somewhat disappointing that we don't see more of Wendt than we do. Isabel Glasser is Gibson's love in the 1939 sequence in an promising debut.
And, yes, Mel Gibson shares his well-regarded butt with us for a brief shot, tastefully half-lit. Brief, but memorable.
There are inconsistency problems when Gibson wakes up to 1992. Push-button phones don't throw him, but answering machines do. There is the fact that, numerous Dracula movies notwithstanding, if a person were to suddenly age, his or her hair would not turn gray from the tips back to root, nor would it happen faster than hair can grow. Likewise, with the rest of geriatric makeup, it's well done -- Oscar material, really -- but wholly impossible. In a Dracula movie, this is not a problem. In a romantic film, much more grounded in our quotidian world, it is a problem. And leave us disregard out of charity the whole issue of Gibson's freezing and resuscitation -- fun scenes, but slightly insulting to anyone prepared to give it a minute's thought. LATE FOR DINNER was better on all these counts; unfortunately, LATE FOR DINNER did not have the star power of Gibson or his butt and so never attracted the audience it deserved.
FOREVER YOUNG, on the other hand, could very well attract a large following. It is, despite playing fast and loose with laws of thermodynamics inter alia, an excellent entertainment: a romantic fantasy, just torrid enough to melt even this reviewer.
I can recommend FOREVER YOUNG to you, even at full prices, but go to a cheap matinee if you can.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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