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07/06/00- Updated 06:40 PM ET

 

Willis misses magic touch with this 'Kid'

By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY

Disney's The Kid

Bstar2.gif (125 bytes) out of four

Stars: Bruce Willis, Spencer Breslin, Emily Mortimer, Lily Tomlin

Director:  Jon Turteltaub

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures

Rating:
PG for mild language

Don't kid yourself about Disney's The Kid. Bruce Willis may have magically teamed with a youngster for last summer's supernatural hit The Sixth Sense. But this boomer-coddling comic fantasy, in which a callous adult on the brink of 40 has a chance encounter with his pudgy, lisping 8-year-old self, is an iffier what-if.

Instead of dead people, the boy (moonfaced Spencer Breslin ) sees jerks. Actually, one huge jerk - Willis as the uptight, joyless, workaholic grown-up he is destined to become. The type who, whenever a poor soul is reduced to tears by his bluntness, retorts with dripping sarcasm, "Somebody call a waaam-bulance.''

At first, Willis employs his famous smirkiness effectively, and he's blessed with indispensable foils, Lily Tomlin as his indulgent-but-no-pushover assistant and Jean Smart as a good ol' gal TV anchor he meets on a business trip. And the situation by writer Audrey Wells (The Truth About Cats & Dogs) contains a flicker of a bright idea, meshing as it does the transformation fantasies of the '80s (Big, Back to the Future) with the white male redemption allegories of the '90s (American Beauty being the era-closer).

But it never really sparks much insight beyond the implied simplistic homily: "You're never too old to change." Blame the pat instincts and broad style of director Jon Turteltaub (Phenomenon) and the hammer-those-emotions tendencies of composer Marc Shaiman , whose swoopy score sounds like a steal from E.T.

What develops is as obvious as the eye twitch that afflicts Willis' overstressed Russ. Take his job. He is a well-paid L.A. image consultant who assists high-powered clients - politicos, sports team owners and other modern-day villains - out of PR jams by camouflaging who they really are. Hmmm. Who else is hiding his real nature?

Enter little Rusty, whose awkwardness is the most honest part of The Kid's shameless heart-tugging. He suddenly shows up one night in Russ' impersonal architectural palace and, while now-trim Russ is appalled to be reminded of his chow-hound past, Rusty is even more upset to see that his future falls far short of his dreams - no dog, no plane, no wife, no life.

The pair reluctantly begin to hang out, and Russ initially passes Rusty off as a nephew to such associates as his admiring co-worker (Emily Mortimer, doing a peppy-neurotic Emma Thompson-Julie Andrews thing). And while Rusty learns such invaluable facts as how old he is when he gets his first hickey, Russ discovers he has sublimated certain traumatic events, such as what's behind the strain between him and his father.

Warning to parents who see the word "Disney" and want to drag kids to The Kid. This fable is heavy on the yadda-yadda and light on the hocus pocus (a '60s diner materializes, a mysterious red prop plane zooms by) until the very end when Russ and Rusty go back to1968. Until then, the under-10s in my audience were squirming like greased ants on a hot griddle.

Besides, I suspect I would want to spank, not hug, my inner child if I ever found her sneaking around in my living room without an invite.




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