The Boy Who Could Fly

Rating:
Summary: Remember when this was the standard for kid's films?
Review: "The Boy Who Could Fly" is such a rarity in the genre. This is not so much a kid's movie, as it is a full-blooded drama that happens to have kids as characters. It tells the story of a family, suffering the loss of their father/husband. The decline in income requires them to move into a "fixer upper" home in a quiet residential neighborhood. The eldest child, Millie (beautifully played by Lucy Deakins) becomes fascinated with the teenage autistic boy next door, Eric (Jay Underwood) who sits in his window all day and pretends to fly. Through circumstances at school, Millie takes him on as a "project." As her kindly teacher(Colleen Dewhurst) points out, "Doctors haven't been able to get a word out of him. Maybe a friend could." She tries to draw him out of his condition through every day activities, and over time, the form a very close connection, and even fall in love. Meanwhile, Millie must deal with the burdens of home, trying to reconcile the suicide of her father, and her very stressed out and grief-stricken mother(the wonderful Bonnie Bedelia), who is trying to get back into the work force.
While there is certainly more to the story than this, it would be a shame to spoil details for those who have not seen this film. It is uncommonly intelligent, charming, and very moving. It speaks in the language of children, without ever becoming condescending or silly, even when the film's more fantastic elements are revealed. The story and its characters feel real. Their grief feels real. Their longing to believe in happy endings feels real.
The performances are outstanding. Lucy Deakins and Jay Underwood are entirely convincing. It's so rare to see a teenage girl portrayed with this kind of uncynical intelligence. Underwood's Eric barely has any lines in the film, but instead, like a young Harrison Ford, communicates so much in his face that we hardly notice. This is a teen romance for the ages.
The adult players are also fine. Bonnie Bedelia, one of the most convincing actors or our era, plays Charlene as tough yet fragile, nurturing but flawed. The late Colleen Dewhurst is lovely and compassionate as Mrs. Sherman.
Surprisingly the film has been written and directed by Nick Castle, known for such disappointments as "Mr. Wrong" and "The Last Starfighter." He is better known as being the 1st actor to play Michael Myers in the original "Halloween." This is his best film by far. He should try to make more films along these lines. We sure need them.
I hope people will show this film to their kids some day. It is a reminder that films about kids used to be intelligent and authentic, not lobotomized, as I feel they have become over the past 15 years. This film still gives me hope, and gives me the excuse to dream.

Rating:
Summary: MONA, AND HER CATTY FRIENDS
Review: "The Boy Who Could Fly" is such a rarity in the genre. This is not so much a kid's movie, as it is a full-blooded drama that happens to have kids as characters. It tells the story of a family, suffering the loss of their father/husband. The decline in income requires them to move into a "fixer upper" home in a quiet residential neighborhood. The eldest child, Millie (beautifully played by Lucy Deakins) becomes fascinated with the teenage autistic boy next door, Eric (Jay Underwood) who sits in his window all day and pretends to fly. Through circumstances at school, Millie takes him on as a "project." As her kindly teacher(Colleen Dewhurst) points out, "Doctors haven't been able to get a word out of him. Maybe a friend could." She tries to draw him out of his condition through every day activities, and over time, the form a very close connection, and even fall in love. Meanwhile, Millie must deal with the burdens of home, trying to reconcile the suicide of her father, and her very stressed out and grief-stricken mother(the wonderful Bonnie Bedelia), who is trying to get back into the work force.
While there is certainly more to the story than this, it would be a shame to spoil details for those who have not seen this film. It is uncommonly intelligent, charming, and very moving. It speaks in the language of children, without ever becoming condescending or silly, even when the film's more fantastic elements are revealed. The story and its characters feel real. Their grief feels real. Their longing to believe in happy endings feels real.
The performances are outstanding. Lucy Deakins and Jay Underwood are entirely convincing. It's so rare to see a teenage girl portrayed with this kind of uncynical intelligence. Underwood's Eric barely has any lines in the film, but instead, like a young Harrison Ford, communicates so much in his face that we hardly notice. This is a teen romance for the ages.
The adult players are also fine. Bonnie Bedelia, one of the most convincing actors or our era, plays Charlene as tough yet fragile, nurturing but flawed. The late Colleen Dewhurst is lovely and compassionate as Mrs. Sherman.
Surprisingly the film has been written and directed by Nick Castle, known for such disappointments as "Mr. Wrong" and "The Last Starfighter." He is better known as being the 1st actor to play Michael Myers in the original "Halloween." This is his best film by far. He should try to make more films along these lines. We sure need them.
I hope people will show this film to their kids some day. It is a reminder that films about kids used to be intelligent and authentic, not lobotomized, as I feel they have become over the past 15 years. This film still gives me hope, and gives me the excuse to dream.

Rating:
Summary: Remember when this was the standard for kid's films?
Review: "The Boy Who Could Fly" is such a rarity in the genre. This is not so much a kid's movie, as it is a full-blooded drama that happens to have kids as characters. It tells the story of a family, suffering the loss of their father/husband. The decline in income requires them to move into a "fixer upper" home in a quiet residential neighborhood. The eldest child, Millie (beautifully played by Lucy Deakins) becomes fascinated with the teenage autistic boy next door, Eric (Jay Underwood) who sits in his window all day and pretends to fly. Through circumstances at school, Millie takes him on as a "project." As her kindly teacher(Colleen Dewhurst) points out, "Doctors haven't been able to get a word out of him. Maybe a friend could." She tries to draw him out of his condition through every day activities, and over time, the form a very close connection, and even fall in love. Meanwhile, Millie must deal with the burdens of home, trying to reconcile the suicide of her father, and her very stressed out and grief-stricken mother(the wonderful Bonnie Bedelia), who is trying to get back into the work force.
While there is certainly more to the story than this, it would be a shame to spoil details for those who have not seen this film. It is uncommonly intelligent, charming, and very moving. It speaks in the language of children, without ever becoming condescending or silly, even when the film's more fantastic elements are revealed. The story and its characters feel real. Their grief feels real. Their longing to believe in happy endings feels real.
The performances are outstanding. Lucy Deakins and Jay Underwood are entirely convincing. It's so rare to see a teenage girl portrayed with this kind of uncynical intelligence. Underwood's Eric barely has any lines in the film, but instead, like a young Harrison Ford, communicates so much in his face that we hardly notice. This is a teen romance for the ages.
The adult players are also fine. Bonnie Bedelia, one of the most convincing actors or our era, plays Charlene as tough yet fragile, nurturing but flawed. The late Colleen Dewhurst is lovely and compassionate as Mrs. Sherman.
Surprisingly the film has been written and directed by Nick Castle, known for such disappointments as "Mr. Wrong" and "The Last Starfighter." He is better known as being the 1st actor to play Michael Myers in the original "Halloween." This is his best film by far. He should try to make more films along these lines. We sure need them.
I hope people will show this film to their kids some day. It is a reminder that films about kids used to be intelligent and authentic, not lobotomized, as I feel they have become over the past 15 years. This film still gives me hope, and gives me the excuse to dream.

Rating:
Summary: Faith moves mountains
Review: A young boy has lost both of his parents and a young girl has lost her father. Their paths cross and they learn a very important lesson through each other. Anything is possible with faith. This is a incredibly wonderful movie with a warm and positive message that was a powerful inspiration to me.

Rating:
Summary: Sweet and Uplifting!
Review: After moving into a new house, the Michaelson family discover that an autistic boy named Eric lives next door. Milly Michaelson(Lucy Deakins) befriends Eric(Jay Underwood) and learns that ever since Eric's parents died in a plane crash, he pretends to fly. Eric lives with his Uncle Hugo Gibb(Fred Gwynne from The Munsters) who is not fit to take care of Eric because he is often drunk. As a result, Eric is occasionally institutionalized since it is feared that his pretending to fly will harm him. Thanks to Mrs. Sherman(Colleen Dewhurst) - Milly and Eric's school teacher, Eric is brought back home. Mrs. Sherman one day asks Milly to help Eric. Milly keeps a daily journal on her efforts which seem fruitless. Near the end, Eric tries to escape from the people who come to institutionalize him, and Milly follows trying to help Eric escape. They end up on the roof of their school, Taft High. Unfortunately, they are followed onto the roof and have nowhere else to run. They walk towards the edge of the roof, threatening to jump!

The magical ending of this great movie will surely leave you with goosebumps and exhilarate you.

Milly: We're all a little like Eric. Maybe we can't soar off into the clouds. But somewhere, deep inside, we can all fly.

Also in the movie are Fred Savage from "The Wonder Years," who plays Milly's small brother, and Mindy Cohn from "The Facts of Life," who plays Milly's neighborhood friend.

Highly recommended. A great family movie.

Rating:
Summary: To Affinity and Beyond by garrie keyman
Review: As a rule, where cinema is concerned, I find what's bad rarely gets better, while what's good rarely gets worse. The 1999 Warner Bros. release of The Boy Who Could Fly remains true to the formula, this Nick Castle (The Last Starfighter; Dennis the Menace) family film as poignant and as delicately powerful today as it was upon its original 1986 theatrical debut.

While this well-balanced and sensitively penned feature was both written and directed by Castle, the movie's five-star rating owes a great deal of its appeal to two of the best (then-)teenage actors I've ever had the pleasure to watch. As the 14-year old Millie Michaelson, Lucy Deakins offers a superbly layered performance depicting a girl shadowed by the loss of her father to cancer and her family's subsequent move to a new home and neighborhood. As Millie's mother (aptly portrayed by Bonnie Bedelia) struggles to cope with a husband's death and the stress of re-entering the workforce, Millie faces a loneliness sharply deepened by the rejection of her catty new classmates and the necessity of picking up an understandable parental slack.

One of Millie's new neighbors is the curiously mute Eric (Jay Underwood), a lad steeped in a private world that no one is able to penetrate. Eric has lived with his softhearted amiable alcoholic uncle (Fred Gwynne) since the age of five, when Eric's parents perished in a plane crash. Since then, Eric has not spoken; his primary pastime consisting of perching in his bedroom window and staring skyward with his arms extended as if he were, himself, a plane. Underwood proves so convincing as Eric that not only can the audience easily forget he is not genuinely autistic, but they are gently transported into his world so faithfully that Eric's conduct makes absolute sense.

At school Millie is paired with Eric in gym class, where her efforts at tossing a ball to the unresponsive boy - a teen normally scorned and ignored by his peers - begins to crack his seemingly impenetrable shell. Later, on a class trip, Millie imagines falling from a bridge while straining for a blossom just beyond reach. Like so many moments in this film, it is a beautiful piece of cinemagraphic artistry: a gorgeous visual depiction replete with sub-textual meaning. Hitting her head on the bridge rail, Millie is knocked unconscious and awakens in the hospital. She is no longer certain that her fall - and her subsequent rescue by Eric -- was a matter of sheer imagination, for after the doctors have departed, there stands Eric: lurking mutely by the billowing curtains just inside what appears to be a sixth-story window.

Soon Eric's budding emergence is threatened; the pall of institutionalization further crippling his psyche when his uncle's drinking calls into question the man's fitness as Eric's guardian. Meanwhile, Millie's martial-minded younger brother, Louis (Fred Savage), is having troubles of his own: from facing territorial bullies, who won't let him circle the block, to recovering toy soldiers for whom he has been conducting backyard funerals as a private coping device following his father's death.

At every turn this film proves both tender and realistic on the level of human hurts and the every-day variety of inner struggles that people encounter. The characters herein cope with pains so ordinary - so common to us all - that clearly these are the truest killing fields of the human heart. These are our silent battles, too: the loneliness of social rejection, the inexorable way life pulls us on following the loss of loved ones, the fight for the right to fearlessly navigate our world - be it the block on which we live or the planet at large.

As the movie moves toward its climax, we have become convinced that the title is allegory: that this is, in fact, a movie about a boy who wished he could fly. This carefully orchestrated fooled-you structure of the script is partly what makes the movie soar. Sparing use of special effects does not detract, but heightens - making The Boy Who Could Fly one of the most down-to-earth flights of fantasy ever brought to the screen.

This fit-for-the-family fare is polished to a fine sheen by strong supporting-cast portrayals, including Colleen Dewhurst (Anne of Green Gables) as the teacher who first pairs Millie and Eric in gym class, and Mindy Cohn (Facts of Life) as a bold, talkative neighbor who befriends Millie. While Underwood appears to have gone on to enjoy a long list of small-role and guest-shot appearances, it remains our loss, I'm sure, that there have not been more leading parts to this likeable actor's credit. Likewise, Deakins appears to be lower on the leading-player radar screen than she deserves, although I did have the pleasure of seeing her off-Broadway last year in The Women's Project production of Julie Jensen's Cheat.

In any event, The Boy Who Could Fly, is an uplifting tale ranking among the few movies I can watch again and again. A keeper, this film is winningly underscored by Bruce Broughton's perfect-companion soundtrack. But be forewarned: settle in with a tissue or two before you pass the popcorn.

Rating:
Summary: Gently-crafted, elegant, and powerful film
Review: Few films could touch this either in the obvious tender care with which it was made, the tightness of its story, its depth and symbolism, or the power of its performances. It is shameful the film never found a wider audience, but if anybody out there really reads these reviews and really wants a satisfying film that bears repeated viewing, one could not do better than this. My hat remains off, 13 years after its release, to writer-director Nick Castle. This is a perfect work of cinema: one of the best U.S. films of the 1980s. Open-minded viewers, fans of the medium and of literature, will never quite get over this tidy, invigorating gem.

Rating:
Summary: A juvenile that will deeply touch adults
Review: First, this is one of the greatest arrays of juvenile acting talent I've seen. Jay Underwood leads the group in a poignant portrayal, ably supported by Lucy Deakins...there is chemistry between the two.

Fred Savage adds just the right comic element, to soften the darker aspect of the movie.

And then, there's the fantasy element. At first, I was disturbed by the sheer fantasy that isn't revealed until the climax of the film. It just seemed as to realistic a film to have such an ending. And yet, I found it somehow refreshing, and yet it's the fantasy which in spite of the title, just didn't come off for me, and that's the only reason for my not feeling that it deserves five stars.

All in all, though, this is a movie to watch and to enjoy. There's just enough real life sense of tragedy in the young people's background here to keep it from being overly sweet.

Rating:
Summary: If not for Mindy Cohn...
Review: I am a huge "Facts of Life" fan, and I saw this movie, before I was aware of the FOL's existents. I saw it again after, and I would watch it purely for the joy of seeing one of my fav little known actresses in a movie. If you like Mindy Cohn in the Facts of Life, you will enjoy her in "The Boy who could Fly". The movie has a weak plot, which is pretty much conveyed by the title.

Rating:
Summary: Simply Magical
Review: I first saw this movie on cable about twelve years ago, and I liked it immensely. But I'd have to say I absolutely loved it when I saw it on the Disney Channel a couple of days ago. Shot for virtually nothing and lacking the usual smarmy high school lowlifes, not only is it a heartwarming, inspiring, and gentle film, it also showcases the fine acting skills and engaging qualities of two actors who--at the time of the film's release--were literally on the edge of stardom. But neither Lucy Deakins nor Jay Underwood have been able to "break through" in Hollywood yet, even though they deserve it.

The always loveable Lucy Deakins, in particular, seems to be in absentia, last appearing in the Disney film Cheetah in 1989 (a film I want to see but can't, because Disney doesn't sell it anymore, in all likelihood because it's not cost-effective). You may remember that Underwood played a young Sonny Bono in the ABC-TV Movie of the Week Sonny & Cher about a year ago.

Nevertheless, Deakins absolutely shines here as a teenage girl whose cancer-laden father has recently committed suicide so his wife and kids would not see him die so miserably. Her Mom and little brother (played well by Bonnie Bedelia and a young Fred Savage) move to a new neighborhood, where she ultimately meets a boy (Underwood, who pulls off a remarkable performance) who has shut himself off from society after his parents died in a plane crash and is forced to live with his likeable but irresponsible alcoholic uncle (played by Fred Gwynne, his wonderful swan song). I have read a number of reviews and synopses that describe the Underwood character as autistic, but unless I am mistaken, I do not believe the film ever refers to him as such.

The film chronicles Deakins and Underwood's characters' budding friendship, and then romance, when Underwood finally opens up to her in a last-ditch effort to prove his love and humanity. The ending, of course, also involves some aviation.

Fred Gwynne and Colleen Dewhurst, who are unfortunately not with us now, give exceptional performances, and Louise Fletcher (who played the evil nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) is quite good, playing a psychiatrist who is Deakins character's modern-day guardian angel. The attractive and zesty Mindy Cohn (of Facts of Life fame) is also fun as Deakins' friend.

Also check out Deakins' wardrobe. If you, like me, grew up in the 1980s, you're bound to recall your sister's purple jeans and pink sweaters with snowflakes!

Gentle and Moving.