Word: culkin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that Macaulay Culkin is a teenager, vulnerability, the quality that has prevented his wise child from turning into a wise guy, comes harder for him. Now that Ted Danson is a movie star, or thinks he is, stupidity comes harder for him. Danson's character in Getting Even with Dad is supposed to be an inept thief, but the actor doesn't want to dig into dumbness, which is where the laughs, if any, might be. Untutored is the worst he'll allow himself to seem. Untutored, but capable of sensitivity, of love, of being a '90s beau ideal...
Providing that chance is the job of the half-pint, in a movie so desperately maneuvered that it's possibly unfair to blame Danson for defending himself against it. Culkin plays Timmy, the son whom widowed Ray hasn't seen for three years, and he arrives just as his dad and two confederates are about to rob a coin collection. This they manage with a cleverness that belies their alleged incompetence. But the boy steals the loot, and will give it back only if Ray will act the good father for a week -- you know, ball games, amusement parks, miniature...
...Judy Davis's lips silicon-injected? If Ted Demme (the director) is related to Jonathan Demme, isn't Jonathan Demme embarrassed? Why wasn't Macaulay Culkin in this movie? These are the questions that gnawed at my brain as the one-liners reached an insipid tedium. Also, I was sure that the town setting was suposed to be a cinematic rendering of Marblehead, Mass (town hall, docks, little white churches, references to Republicans), but then someone in the movie said "our relatives are coming down from Boston for Christmas." I could only conclude that this wasn't Marblehead: the Marblehead...
...grown up on. (After a year or two, they become members of the boisterous Nutcracker fraternity who ritually applaud the prince's victories, always at the same plot points.) The movie should have been a triumph, but somehow it falls short. Not because of the performances, which are fine. Culkin appears a little too camera-wise performing among relative amateurs, but he is an effective prince. Kistler dances with the tender grace of a fairy princess. Kyra Nichols leaps through the role of Dewdrop like a cavorting sprite. In the Marzipan Shepherdess's exacting solo -- full of exposed pointe work...
...Director Emile Ardolino's palette is inexplicably dark and shot so dizzily that the dancing is often hard to follow. Much of the party scene is a murky jumble. To help clarify things, the filmmakers added a last-minute narration by Kevin Kline. From a purist's viewpoint, Kit Culkin, Macaulay's demanding father and manager, was correct when he argued noisily that this intrusion into Balanchine's concept should be excised. When he lost out, he retaliated by withdrawing his son's participation in promoting the film. Kit has a right to his opinion; after all, he played...