THE GOOD SON
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1993 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Elijah Wood, Wendy Crewson,
Daniel Hugh Kelly.
Screenplay: Ian McEwan.
Director: Joseph Ruben.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
I have a confession to make which may compromise my integrity as a reviewer (if that isn't an oxymoron): I wanted THE GOOD SON to be horrible. *Really* horrible. I've grown so tired of Macaulay Culkin's yelping mug and the highly-publicized power grabs by his manager-dad, that I wanted him to be wholly responsible for a colossal failure. Well, THE GOOD SON isn't horrible; it's merely mediocre, which may be worse. At least a truly awful thriller can provoke campy laughs. All THE GOOD SON provoked in me was boredom.
THE GOOD SON is the story of Mark (Elijah Wood), a young boy who has just lost his mother to cancer and is guilt-ridden because he promised her he wouldn't let her die. When his father (David Morse) is forced to leave the country on business soon after Mom's death, Mark is taken across country to stay with his Uncle Wallace (Daniel Hugh Kelly) and Aunt Susan (Wendy Crewson) in New England. There Mark soon becomes fast friends with their son, his cousin Henry (Macaulay Culkin). All seems well until Henry begins to pull some rather destructive pranks. As Mark becomes more and more frightened of Henry, Henry becomes more and more malevolent, until Mark begins to fear that Henry's directionless mayhem might be turned on his own family.
I had very little problem with the basic premises of THE GOOD SON. I could accept that a child might be pushed over the edge into pathological behavior by a trauma (the drowning of Henry's infant brother); I could accept that parents still in shock over the death of one child might be completely unwilling to believe that one of their other children is a creep, even in the face of evidence. The problems with THE GOOD SON are almost entirely in the execution. The film waits far too long, nearly a third of its running time, before introducing us to Henry, setting up Mark's guilt and showing off desert scenery. By then, it's so late in the game that Henry has to get too crazy too soon. There's no time for the menace to build slowly, or for the early pranks to be tame enough so that Mark could get a bit caught up in them himself. Ian McEwan's script seemed to need another draft and earlier plot points.
The performances are also a big problem. Elijah Wood is fine, a good young actor forced to spend most of this film making his eyes as wide as possible. His relatives, however, don't fare as well. I said that I accepted the idea of oblivious parents in shock, but Wendy Crewson and Daniel Hugh Kelly don't play Susan and Wallace as shocked. We're never specifically told how long it has been since the death of the other son, and that would have helped. As it is, Wallace seems perfectly recovered, while Susan appears simply melancholy, striking Bronte-esque poses on a seaside promontory. Consequently, they come off as ridiculously stupid. This is also parly the fault of a performance by Culkin lacking in subtlety. Instead of the straightforward tone of a true sociopath, Culkin adopts the wide-eyed, solemn, sing-song style any parent would instantly recognize as a child lying. It's even harder to believe he's able to convince a family therapist. To give him his due, he does a decent job of playing the devilish prankster; that is, after all, what he was in the HOME ALONE movies. It's homicidal that he hasn't quite mastered.
If there's one surprising culprit in THE GOOD SON's failings, it's director Joseph Ruben. After THE STEPFATHER and SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, you'd think he'd have the "psychotic extended family" thing down cold. But THE GOOD SON goes everywhere you expect it to go, exactly when you expect it. It's a competent but cut-and-paste directing job, providing the minimum recommended allowance of suspense. I never groaned out loud, but I never felt any real tension, either.
THE GOOD SON is not a complete failure. It's the kind of thriller where you might jump once, then wonder why you fell for *that* old bit. And as reluctant as I am to admit it, Culkin shows that he might be more than a one-trick pony given a little seasoning. It just might be a good idea if his next trick is something original.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 pranks: 5.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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