Disney's The Kid
USA 2000
Reviewed by Rob White
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
US, the present. Russ Duritz is an image consultant about to turn 40. He bullies his secretary Janet, provokes his girlfriend Amy and dismisses his father's attempts at bonding. One day he finds a boy in his house: by an act of time-travel it's his eight-year-old self, Rusty. Russ thinks Rusty is a wimp; Rusty thinks Russ should be married and own a dog. Rusty is being bullied. Russ takes him to a client, a boxer, to learn to fight. At the boxer's wedding Rusty proposes to Amy, but Russ laughs it off. Russ tells Rusty how his life will turn out and works out that if he can remember his childhood the time-travel will be reversed. As they talk in his car, Russ remembers a fight with a school bully.
Suddenly he and Rusty are in Rusty's time, just before the fight. Using his new boxing skills, Rusty beats the bully. His father is furious at Rusty because the fight is stressful for Rusty's dying mother. Russ takes the tearful Rusty to a diner at an airport. There they meet 70-year-old Russ who's a pilot, is married to Amy and is accompanied by a dog. Back in his own time, Russ buys Janet a holiday, is reconciled with his father and goes to Amy's house with a puppy.
Review
In Disney's The Kid a crease in time allows Russ Duritz, a successful image consultant, to be visited, on the eve of his fortieth birthday, by Rusty, his eight-year-old younger self. Hollywood time-travel comedies - notably the Back to the Future series and Peggy Sue Got Married - do various kinds of work: they are science-fiction spin-offs more or less enchanted by their paradoxical premise, baby-boomer nostalgia exercises that rosily illuminate the 50s and 60s and morality plays where family suffering is smoothed out in the impossible collision of the worlds of childhood and adulthood. The Kid, unlike Back to the Future, spends little time on the intricacies of time-travel. Director Jon Turteltaub (Instinct) and screenwriter Audrey Wells (The Truth about Cats & Dogs) take no delight in probing the paradox of how time looping back on itself might change the future. Their film doesn't even bother to include a humdrum device that supposedly engineers the travel. Instead a red plane careens above Russ' car, signalling the crease out of which Rusty will emerge. The Kid lacks the basic invention that in similar films tends to distract from the pathos of the premise.
Russ has to confront the dreams that he had when he was Rusty. Rusty's view of life, of course, wins out in the end, but not before the story has forked in two directions. First Russ travels back to Rusty's schooldays, when he was bullied and when his mother was terminally ill. Trained to box by one of Russ' clients, Rusty wins the schoolyard fight that Russ had originally lost. But this moment of victory leads only to Rusty's father being called to the school. Russ watches the ugly scene between father and son unfold and his adult eyes see the complexity of the situation. Rusty returns to childhood, Russ to his present where he's reconciled with his father and girlfriend. Before Russ and Rusty separate there's the second forking in which they encounter their older self at a radiant 70: Russ at 39 is thus only an aberration in Rusty's realised dream of life. This final contrivance literalises the film's underlying pattern of wish-fulfilment so there's no room for ambiguity, no sense of an unpredictable future. The fact that lives aren't like this is less important than the fact that the film shuts out any psychological interest in order to handcuff itself to the most banal interpretation of the idea that 'the child is father of the man'.
The Kid works only intermittently because it tries to speak to children in the adult voice of nostalgic fantasy. It is sunny and antiseptic, which means it avoids at all cost reflecting on what life will have in store for both Russ and Rusty now they know their own future.
Credits
- Director
- Jon Turteltaub
- Producers
- Jon Turteltaub
- Christina Steinberg
- Hunt Lowry
- Screenplay
- Audrey Wells
- Director of Photography
- Peter Menzies Jr
- Editors
- Peter Honess
- David Rennie
- Production Designer
- Garreth Stover
- Music
- Marc Shaiman
- ©Disney Enterprises, Inc.
- Production Companies
- Walt Disney Pictures presents a Junction Entertainment production
- Executive Producers
- Arnold Rifkin
- David Willis
- Co-producers
- Bill Johnson
- William M. Elvin
- Associate Producer
- Stephen Eads
- Production Co-ordinator
- Daren Hicks
- Production Manager
- Bill Johnson
- Location Manager
- Ralph Coleman
- 2nd Unit Director
- David R. Ellis
- Assistant Directors
- William M. Elvin
- Ken Wada
- David Ticotin
- Andrew Michael Ward
- 2nd Unit:
- Dennis Maguire
- Jayson Merrill
- Script Supervisors
- Thomas Johnston
- 2nd Unit:
- Heather Harris
- Casting
- Marcia Ross
- Donna Morong
- Gail Goldberg
- Associate:
- Jacqueline Carlson
- ADR Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- 2nd Unit Director of Photography
- Gary Capo
- Camera Operators
- Robert Presley
- Richard Cantu
- 2nd Unit:
- Ian Fox
- Chris Moseley
- Steadicam Operator
- Robert Presley
- Space Cam Operators
- Aerial Unit:
- Steve Koster
- Ron Goodman
- Visual Effects Editor
- Pamela Choules
- Visual Effects Supervisor
- James E. Price
- Visual Effects
- Secret Lab
- Special Effects
- Co-ordinator:
- David Blitstein
- Foreman:
- Gary Schaedler
- 2nd Unit:
- David Simmons
- Graphics Designer
- Kim Lincoln
- Art Director
- David S. Lazan
- Senior Lead Set Designers
- Lauren Cory
- Paul Sonski
- Set Designers
- Charisse Cardenas
- Gary A. Lee
- Beck Taylor
- Sloane U'ren
- Set Decorator
- Larry Dias
- Illustrator
- James Oxford
- Costume Designer
- Gloria Gresham
- Costume Supervisor
- Mitchell Kenney
- Make-up
- Key Artists:
- Julie Hewett
- Melanie Hughes
- Artist:
- Carrey Gibbons
- 2nd Unit, Artist:
- Richard Snell
- Make-up Ageing Effects
- Gerald Quist
- Hair
- Department Head:
- Bonnie Clevering
- Stylist:
- Roxanne Wightman
- Title Design
- Brian King
- Opticals
- Buena Vista Imaging
- Orchestra Conductor
- Pete Anthony
- Orchestrations
- Pete Anthony
- Jeff Atmajian
- Frank Bennett
- Harvey Cohen
- Jon Kull
- Pat Russ
- Location Music Supervisor
- Harold Wheeler
- Executive in Charge of Music, Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group
- Kathy Nelson
- Music Editors
- Stephanie Lowry
- Temp:
- Stephen Lotwis
- Score Recordist/Mixer
- Tim Boyle
- Music Programmer
- Nick Vidar
- Production Music Recordist
- Rick Norman
- Music Playback Operator
- Earl Martin
- Soundtrack
- "Young at Heart",
"Yester Me, Yester You, Yesterday" - Kevon Edmonds; "Up, Up and Away" - The 5th Dimension; "Romanza" - Robert Cornford; "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" - Jackie Wilson; "ABC O&O Theme" - Sound Mixer
- Peter J. Devlin
- Recordist
- Judy Nord
- Re-recording Mixers
- Terry Porter
- Mel Metcalfe
- Dean A. Zupancic
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Mark Mangini
- Co-supervising Sound Editor
- Kelly Cabral
- Dialogue Editors
- Kimaree Long
- Richard Dwan
- Lauren Stephens
- Sound Effects Recordist
- Eric Potter
- Effects Editors
- George Simpson
- Donald Flick
- Aaron Glascock
- Marvin Walowitz
- Jim Christopher
- Richard Anderson
- David A. Whittaker
- ADR
- Supervisor:
- Jennifer Mann
- Recordist:
- Jeannette Browning
- Mixer:
- Doc Kane
- Editors:
- Laura Graham
- Mary Smith
- Michelle Perrone
- Foley
- Supervisor:
- Solange S. Schwalbe
- Artists:
- Hilda Hodges
- Catherine Harper
- Recordist:
- Robert Zubia
- Mixer:
- Don Givens
- Boxing Coach
- Darrell Foster
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Jack Gill
- Aerial Unit
- Aerial Co-ordinator:
- Cliff Fleming
- Stearman Stunt Pilot:
- Craig Hosking
- Bi-Plane Pilot:
- Steve Hinton
- Pitts Pilot:
- Neil Loovy
- Pilots
- James Gavin
- Rick Shuster
- Dirk Vahle
- Animal Co-ordinators
- Boone Narr
- Carrie Simpson
- Cast
- Bruce Willis
- Russ Duritz
- Spencer Breslin
- Rusty Duritz
- Emily Mortimer
- Amy
- Lily Tomlin
- Janet
- Chi McBride
- Kenny
- Jean Smart
- Deirdre Lafever
- Dana Ivey
- Dr Alexander
- Daniel Von Bargen
- Sam Duritz
- Stanley Anderson
- Bob Riley
- Susan Dalian
- Giselle
- Juanita Moore
- Kenny's grandmother
- Esther Scott
- Clarissa
- Deborah May
- governor
- Vernee Watson Johnson
- newsstand cashier
- Jan Hoag
- newsstand tourist
- Melissa McCarthy
- Sky King waitress
- Elizabeth Arlen
- Gloria Duritz
- Alexandra Barreto
- flight attendant
- John Apicella
- hot dog vendor
- Brian McGregor
- Vince
- Reiley McClendon
- Mark
- Brian Tibbetts
- Herbert
- Brian McLaughlin
- George
- Steve Tom
- lawyer Bruce
- Marc Copage
- lawyer Jim
- Rod McLachlan
- lawyer Seamus
- Scott Mosenson
- wedding guest
- Brian Fenwick
- governor's aide
- Dusan Fager
- governor's other aide
- Toshiya Agata
- sushi chef
- Joshua Finkel
- Josh
- Lou Beatty Jr
- general manager
- E.J. Callahan
- principal
- Daryl Anderson
- Janet's husband
- Darrell Foster
- best man
- Michael Wajacs
- security guard
- John Travis
- chef Mike
- Larry King
- Larry King
- Jeri Ryan
- Nick Chinlund
- Larry King's guests
- Stuart Scott
- Stuart Scott
- Rich Eisen
- Rich Eisen
- Harold Greene
- Harold Greene
- Kevon Edmonds
- wedding singer
- Julia Waters
- Maxine Waters
- Stephanie Spruill
- backup singers
- [uncredited]
- Matthew Perry
- long-haired client
- Certificate
- PG
- Distributor
- Buena Vista International (UK)
- 9,379 feet
- 104 minutes 13 seconds
- Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS
- In Colour
- Prints by
- Technicolor