10 Best of 2007

Iit is frustrating that a movie this good never found an audience. Here is a well written and superbly acted (and very well reviewed) film that for some reason only did $4.5 million at the box office. The worst part of it is that the next time a script like this comes along, the studios are going to pass on it because of the apparent failure of this movie. Hopefully it will find an audience on DVD, and maybe (if we are really lucky) even start to get some notice during awards season; a movie called Crash was a huge disappointment two years ago at the box office, but it did pretty well nine months later at the Oscars. Everyone is great, but especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Matthew Goode, and Jeff Daniels. If you like movies with a strong script and brilliant character development you will want to take a look at this.

Thankfully, the movie is very loyal to the book. Disregard any previews you may have seen that focus on the fantasy elements; only a very small percentage of the film is in the fantasy world (and, as in the book, it is made clear that the childrens' imaginations are creating the world). Without giving anything away, I will say to those that have read the book that no major plot elements have been changed. This is easily the best family film in recent years and it does not dumb down any of the subject matter as is typical of movies made for children. I had a few complaints, like the casting of Leslie (although Annasophia Robb was very good, just not as tomboyish as she is in the book) and the lack of development of the relationship between Jess and Miss Edmonds, but I admit I'm overly critical because this was my favorite book when I was a kid. This is a movie that was very poorly marketed in an attempt to get the Chronicles of Narnia crowd to see it; fortunately, it deals with much more real and complex issues than the fantasy world that the trailers portray, although if you pay attention you will realize the fantasy world parallels the real world for these kids, illustrating the depth that this movie has that most films intended to be family friendly do not. This will definitely be on my top 10 list for 2007, something I cannot normally say about a movie this early in the year.