Children on Their Birthdays (2002)

I confess I did not make it through this film. The Truman Capote short story is a perfect little blend of cruel satire and genuine nostalgia; this movie only gets the "nostalgia" part, and does it in ways we've all seen before. Everything is shot in deep, super-saturated color and you can predict everyone's lines a couple of seconds before they emerge from the actors' mouths. After a very few minutes, I realized that the adapter/director Mark Medoff intended to convert all that was good in the story into "inspirational" treacle for the family-film trade (complete with one of the most maudlin movie scores ever) and I skipped to the end to see if, at any rate, the movie would have the courage to honor the short story's pitiless conclusion (without which it has no point at all). Of course, it didn't. Lily-Jane's final "wistful" closeup (as the bus doors shut on her face) might kindly be called nauseating.

Watching a movie like this that turns out to be a disaster is a strange experience. It's "based" on one of Truman Capote's early short stories. Well, it has the title and characters and setting. The story? Bits and pieces of it.What's good= If there were an Oscar given for Best Location Scout, this would have won it. The houses and stores are amazing and there are lots of old cars. There's also some great (with the exception of a Celine Dion song that comes out of nowhere) music, using lots of songs from the Big Band era. Ditto costumes and hairstyles.What's bad= Almost everything else. There are too many situations that had me and Mrs. Bear simply rolling our eyes. But the worst thing is the heavy "Southern" accents the actors have. On stage, they could have gotten away with this. But film is a terribly unforgiving medium in that you've got actors standing on real streets in front of real houses. Director Mark Medoff is a hugely talented writer, having won a Tony Award for CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD. What possessed a writer from Illinois, shooting in great locations in his home state, to think he could handle the speech patterns of the rural South? I recently saw an independent film called NOBLE THINGS, which was set and filmed in the Beaumont, Texas, area. Because its director couldn't afford a lot of Hollywood actors he hired actors from Houston and Beaumont and their speech patterns were natural and unaffected.At best, CHILDREN ON THEIR BIRTHDAYS is a noble effort gone bad. At worst, its abject financial failure (less than $60 thousand returned on a $10 million investment, although it made some more return on investment through DVD and cable)gives Hollywood an excuse to pump out more sequels, more unwanted remakes, and more ultra violent comic book movies. Maybe I should go back and reduce that rating of 3 even lower.

This is a great Truman Capote story about a grifter that gets away with stealing money from poor country folk and an odd little girl who gets run over by the bus that's supposed to take her to Hollywood. It also contains perceptive observations about race relations in Depression era Alabama.The movie version has the horrible moppet catch the bad guy, return the stolen loot and get on the bus for fame and fortune. To add insult to injury Celine Dion sings over the closing credits. The racial themes are all but obliterated.Fans of Capote be warned that none of his wit or satire was retained for this film that plays like an after-school special.

I noticed the title and blurb on Showtime In Demand as I was just looking for something to watch. My wife and I have enjoyed several other pieces (the Grass Harp, A Christmas Memory based on Capote's work, and it also looked like the type of movie we could enjoy with our grandkids. But, never did it occur to me that this would turn out to be the best film I've seen since A Beautiful Mind. It turns out that Children On Their Birthdays is a very special film.The first thing about this unheralded masterpiece that grabbed me was the score -- an ideal score for this idyllic fable. The next thing is the town, the fields, the swimming hole, the clothes -- all the visuals that make the town come so utterly alive -- every color and fabric evocative of this picaresque southern town in 1947. Next, the exposition of the characters, introduced through various vignettes, gives us insights to a dozen interesting townsfolk who we recognize and care about. Sheryl Lee Diamond is incredibly dead on as Billy Bob's mother -- Billy Bob being the lead character. The young actor playing Preacher, however, steals every scene he is in. Christopher MacDonald plays the sturdy Speedy with just the right hint of uncertainty. And, Tom Arnold is perfectly cast as the dapper con man who almost takes the life out of the town -- if not for our heroine -- and good ol' Preacher. The nuances at the town talent show and at the Country Fair sequences were also perfect. Another casting coup was getting Phyllis Frelich to play the role of the mute Mrs. Bobbitt.I think Children On Their Birthdays is a magnificent film with unexpectedly high production values. I highly recommend it.