THREE FACES OF BRUCE
DISNEY'S THE KID
Directed by Jon Turtletaub
Screenplay by Audrey Wells
With Bruce Willis, Spencer Breslin
UA North PG 101 min
Russ Duritz (Bruce Willis) is an overbearing, insulting, obnoxious PR consultant. When he's called a jerk four times in one scene, he asks his assistant Amy (Emily Mortimer) if that makes it true. "No," she says, "four times is a pattern. It takes five times to be a fact." Shortly thereafter she calls him a jerk, and that was good enough for me.
The premise of this comedy is that Russ needs serious help from his inner child to overcome his personality impediment, and through the magic of Disney, that help incarnates as his 8-year-old self, Rusty (Spencer Breslin). Nobody seems to have much trouble accepting this curious phenomenon, and there's precious little explanation of how it happened, but Rusty looks as if he may have climbed out of a Campbell's Soup can.
Of all the under-explained phenomena in the movie, the undermost-explained is why people like Russ so much. On the one hand we're shown what an obnoxious prick he is, and on the other we see people beaming at him and falling in love with him. Maybe it's because he looks like Bruce Willis. Amy admits that every time she's ready to leave, she gets a glimpse of the kid in him, and she just melts.
Russ has spent his adult life overcoming the dweeb he was as a kid, and little Rusty is no more pleased to see how he turns out ("A dogless, chickless guy with a tick!") The challenge is for each to change the other, and this movie has no conscience about that old "never mess with the past" caveat. There's a surprise guest appearance by yet a third Russ character to round things off.
Willis, who seems to have partitioned his career into the action Bruce Willis and the sensitive Bruce Willis here again shows his sweet, child-loving side, and Breslin overcomes some inept early scenes (but heck, he's only 8) to do an ingratiating job. Best are Lily Tomlin as Russ's wry secretary ("How's Mini-you?"), and Jean Smart (Guinevere) as an understanding client. A witty screenplay by Audrey Wells (Guinevere) helps carry this movie safely into the "fun for the family" zone. But it's not recommended for diabetics.
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