Rating of
3/4
'The Odd Life of Timothy Green' Movie Review
trophywife - wrote on 08/22/12
Occasionally, I get the pleasure of seeing a movie that not only leaves me feeling a little more hopeful about the world and the people in it, but that is also one I can feel good about taking my kids to. ‘The Odd Life of Timothy Green’ is THAT kind of movie.
THE GOOD: Faced with the very real heartache of learning that they cannot conceive a child, Cindy and Jim Green (played respectively by Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton), decide that they will sit down and make a list of all the things the child they had dreamed of MIGHT have been, as a form of closure. They place the pieces of paper lovingly in a wooden box, and together they bury it in their garden, symbolic I suppose of recognizing the death of a dream – and then they decide to move on. But that night a strange storm passes through town, and the Green’s wake to find a little mud covered miracle in their home, by the name of Timothy (played masterfully by C.J. Adams). Ten years old with leaves growing out of his legs, the little boy is clearly meant to be their child and seems much more at peace with his appearance than his new parents, who begin to fumble their way through this thing called parenthood that has no instruction manual. Cindy is over protective to a fault and Jim tries desperately to be the father that he himself never had. It’s comical, it’s touching, and it’s very much what most first time parents experience, even when their child doesn’t grow out of the ground. There are lessons to be learned from this child, not just for his parents, but the entire town as well – and you sort of find yourself hoping that everyone will take their time learning those lessons, because you dread what is coming once they do.
THE BAD: The story is told in a backwards sort of way, as the movie begins with Cindy and Jim sitting at an adoption agency, being given the opportunity to explain why they feel they would be good candidates for adopting a child. They begin to tell their story of Timothy, in an effort to convince the woman in charge that they have actually experienced parenthood, and the tale begins. It wasn’t a horrible way to tell the story, but the cutting back and forth to the meeting room and the look of confusion/disbelief on the woman’s face felt like it detracted from the tenderness that they were trying to convey. There were also, I hate to admit, a few lines in the movie that made me cringe with embarrassment at how cheesy and sentimental they were, including one about a pencil from a mean- spirited museum director (played by Dianne Wiest) that made me laugh at a moment that was, I think, meant to be triumphant – or something.
THE UGLY: Unless you have been touched by infertility yourself, or know and love someone who has, it is sometimes easy to be unaware of the pain that certain comments can cause to people who are going through it. But sometimes people can be so off the charts insensitive that you wonder why someone doesn’t just smack them upside the head -- case in point: Brenda, Cindy’s sister (played by Rosemarie DeWitt). This woman is so full of herself and her “perfect” children, that she is oblivious to how her comments hurt Cindy. When Cindy tells Brenda of something she has been doing lately, and Brenda responds with the equivalent of “Wow, it must be nice having nothing to do with your life so that you can keep doing a lot of nothing, while the rest of us have to run our wonderful little darlings around to soccer practice…blah, blah, blah”, you seriously want to throw a shoe at her face.
The movie isn’t perfect and at times lacks a little in the “this makes perfect sense” department (the mom works in a museum that celebrates….pencils??) But we ARE talking about a little boy that grows in the garden, so it’s only fair that no one goes into this film looking for a realistic storyline. You will, however, feel some very realistic emotion, especially at the end….and if you don’t, maybe you haven’t ever loved a child.
The Trophy Wife gives this movie 3 trophies.
‘The Odd Life of Timothy Green’ has a running time of 104 minutes and is rated PG for mild thematic elements and brief language.
