Reviews

Ward Cleaver was a feckless slacker and knocked up June and fled to Alaska leaving June with an 8 year old girl and a 6 year old boy. June moves house to be near her mother who will 'help' so she can go back to school and finish her degree and get a better paying job.

She marries her professor who is twice her but has a nice big house and two children who are about the same age as her own. He turns out to be an overbearing and abusive drunk. They flee.

She then becomes involved with a well meaning prison guard. I think she leaves again but I may have dosed off. Meanwhile we see the Beaver character have 'quality' moments with his real Dad who has broken his heart because he sold the cool muscle car that he promised him in the third grade to buy a minivan to accommodate his new family. This must be his transition to the 'real' Ward Cleaver as he now wears a suit and tie and works for an insurance company.

The Beaver wins 2nd place in a photo contest after spending all his time in the dark room in the age of digital as he has artistic depth. He wins a small scholarship and goes off to college as far away as he can get as long as its still in Texas.

His Mom, in saying goodbye recounts all the milestones in her life and bursts into tears as she realises that sending her youngest off to college is the last one. All that is left is her funeral or so she tells him. She appears to have gained weight and will be moving into her mother's tiny apartment.

He arrives at some college in the middle of nowhere, meets his dorm mate, his dorm mate's girl friend and her room mate. They take mushrooms and go hiking. The friend of his new room mate's girl friend and he are watching as the room mate and girl friend howl like coyotes and yell stuff. The friend of the room mate says,

"You know how people are always talking about 'seizing the moment'?

"Yeah." He says

"Well, I think it really the other way around."

He agrees sort of.

The End.

Appendix:

Briefly seen are the following. Beaver gets a bad haircut. He checks out lingerie ads in a catalogue. He's teased by mean boys. His friend shows him internet porn. Big kids give him a beer. His girl friend dumps him because she likes someone else who is older and perhaps less boring.

The 3 stars are all for Patricia Arquette without whom the movie would be completely unbearable.

It becomes preoccupied with the back story and ceases to be fun in the late episodes of season 1. The bloke in the wheel chair become a bore and the whole thing takes itself too seriously. It becomes a boring melodrama. Episodes 1-15 re fun and he rest is filler. At it's best the Dark Angel is out saving the world from evil republican scum despite her obligations to her job as a bicycle messenger and her funny co-workers. 'Original Cindy' and Kendra round out her girl crew. When Kendra departs it all goes to sideways. The character of Kendra was not so compelling as to presage the demise of the show. It's just a benchmark. The show goes seriously wrong when the stories are preoccupied with the past. Really stupid writers and producers are responsible for this programmes demise.

This is one of those movies that moves me to enough to reconsider my place in the world. Vis a vis the treasured assumptions of my rebellious youth. It is a strangely life affirming movie in unexpected ways. A girl who is so alone, not for years or even decades but for centuries, longs for intimacy. She yearns for love but is cut off from the world by a condition of her's and her mother's survival. She doubts her mother and confides in a sympathetic stranger. Reaching out,imploring and hopeful. This attempt at intimacy proves the wisdom of her mother's caution and imperils them both. This movie casts a spell. Let it wash over you. If you have ever felt the isolation of being a stranger the heart of this movie will resonate with you. Was it the values of your parents and their bizarre adherence to a code that was meaningless to you that made you feel a stranger? But after years of experience you begin to understand but cannot accept these egregiously unfair conditions of being. You rebel. You put all at risk. Not just for yourself but for all that you care for. It is the natural compassion of an unexpected ally that saves you and your loved ones. In the end you have the power to impart the secret of immortality. A gift to bestow on the dying, the worthy life, to be ended too soon. You have a gift.

This is one of those movies where people who do 'bad' things even for good reasons must be punished. In final denouement some will be moved but if you are like me you will just be annoyed at the clichéd predictability of it all. It really doesn't start out this way but as the story progresses the intent becomes clear, though we hang on, however vain the hope, that something good may develop. I suppose that's a positive. The director does keep us clinging to our wishful thinking, though we know deep down that our hearts must be broken in this version of the western kabuki play. There are some decent performances. Clare Bowen makes a valiant effort but her character was never fully believable for me. The others seemed like competent stock characters. The direction seemed to be amateurish at times and the numerous attempts to use lens flares and back-lighting 'creatively' I found irritating and distracting. Then there is the matter of a shotgun being able to drop a fast moving horse at a distance of 200 plus yards and other assorted improbabilities and inconsistencies. I hope the director gets another shot. I think with experience and some competent mentoring he may do some fine work.