Tuck Everlasting: Review By B. Alan Orange

Code Orange Alert #38641: TUCK EVERLASTING

"Spine-binding," says B. Alan Orange, formerly of Long Beach, California, "I'm still shaking out the cramps."

They've done it to me again; those three-day c*ck brokers. They went and made another movie based on some book I've never read. And, probably, will never read. Trust me on this; I'm sure you feel the same way. I hooked into the National Library Association's website and did a cross-country search. Since the book's initial release in 1975, it has only been checked out 23 times. That's a high-powered investigation scanning the records of every Library from Oregon to New York State. So tell me why Disney felt the need to shove this one down our throats? I swear, the studio system has forcibly hired a man, who's not anatomically correct, to trounce up and down the isles of every bookstore from here to Muskogee, blindly pulling books down from any random shelf with his teeth. You've got to keep the good ol' people of America entertained, you have to keep makin' them movin' pictures; they're not unlike hamburgers flying off a belt. The audience is hungry, and if a big release doesn't plop itself down in our laps come Friday evening, there'll be Hell to pay.

What, with people getting stupider, and our International Imagination Well quickly drying up, the only means of generating a story is through Barnes & Noble. That's fine, but why not recreate Mick Farren's Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife? I'd rather see that than this. Get Val Kilmer to reprise his two greatest roles in Morrison and Doc Holiday and you've got yourself a winner. But, no. Not this time. I guess, maybe, I'm bitter. Tuck Everlasting is coming too strongly on the heels of The Four Feathers. I'm still in the process of straightening out my spine from that blase amount of time in lockdown.

I'll knock it off the tip of my bat like a ball flung at my head by some overachieving minor league baseball player on an Orange Glow high; this movie is good. With it's breathtaking locales and it's superb casting, it looks and feels just like one of those live action Disney classics from the 1970s, ready and waiting to be enjoyed in a stand-alone theater on a Sunday afternoon; call it a matinee. I'm sure girls of all ages will love Tuck Everlasting. Boys may have a tougher time with a lot of its narrative. Some adults may even enjoy the quaint proceedings found here, but not me. This thing left me squirming at the edge of my seat, trying unsuccessfully to rub some life back into an already numb ass. Don't ask me why, but I just couldn't get into Disney's latest effort.

Tuck successfully achieves exactly what it has set out to do. It's a clear and entertaining adaptation of previously published material, improved for a newer, slightly more sophisticated audience. Still, that doesn't make a bit of difference to me. I've never had, nor do I now harbor, a need to suffer through something like Tuck Everlasting; being brought to the screen, here, for a second time since its original inception. (The first was back in 1980; starring nobody you've ever heard of. Trust me.) I mean, what is this? To me it looks like a Vampire movie without any of those fun Vampire scares left intact. The writers have taken away every myth and concept usually associated with the Living Dead, except the notion of eternal life. This Tuck family is a boring brood of bloodsuckers, and I doubt Blade 2 will come looking for them anytime soon. The older brother's a mean cuss, but the rest of the family, made up of Jesse Jackson...No, wait, that's Jonathan Jackson, Sissy Spacek, and William Hurt, are all kindly time-locked spinsters harboring a thirst for the Fountain of Youth, here disguised as a mud puddle at the root of a petrified tree. Ooh, spooky.

Okay, okay...So it's not supposed to be scary. What is it supposed to be about, then? A girl's first fling, none the less. Basically, Tuck Everlasting glamorizes the act of running away from home, and should successfully urge homely girls to do just that. Yeah, this isn't your average, over-glamorized after-school special. It's quite the opposite, promising school children that escaping from their dreary home life is the keen thing to do. Tuck supports the notion that if a young woman gets lost in the 'scary' woods, she'll come across some hunky 20 year old posing as a high school student. Well, it's all a lie. Kids, especially all you young girls out there, take it from me: There is no Jonathan Jackson living in the woods near your house. Stay home. The food's free. These fables are false. (Jesse Jackson, on the other hand, is most likely hiding in your forest; another good reason to stay in your bedroom.)

I do like this Jonathan-guy's tactics, though. As they slowly grow to know and accept each other through a long day of gaiety, Jackson convinces Alexis Bledel, the girl who's run away from home, to jump in a nook under a waterfall. He does this, basically, to cop one Hell of a feel. Tell me this dude isn't sporting the biggest log since Lincoln invented Maple Syrup. Watch his face, he's having too much fun to be acting.

Soon after, while both of them dry their undergarments near a late-night campfire, Alexis breaks into a freeform dance usually reserved for those tawdry girls who've gone wild. Where did she learn these moves? Isn't this 1914? They didn't harbor pelvic thrusts like this back in the golden age. A girl of her upbringing would be a little more reserved in body flow. This scene, alone, borders on being totally inappropriate for a kid's movie. But then, I got to thinking...Jonathan Jackson is locked in a sixteen year old's body, but he's been living in that skin for 78 years. That would make him 94 years old. Alexis is still only fifteen, herself.

Um, so, I guess Disney supports statutory rape? Hey, I'm just thinking out loud...

Come to think of it, the Tuck family does have a vampire-hunter of sorts on their trail. Ben Kingsley provided the only truly interesting moments for me, here, showing up at Alexis' fence in a creepy yellow suit with a matching cheesy, greasy smile. He desperately wants the Eternal Spring for himself and his dying sister, and will expose the gentle Tucks to achieve his prize. Ben never fails to be completely mesmerizing, and bucks it home completely. The guy looks like a drowned rat smothered in a mustard colored clown jacket; one that he never takes off. It got me to wondering about his wardrobe choice. Walking around in the woods all day, wouldn't that shade of cotton get extremely dirty? Does he have more than one yellow suit, because, God, that thick pelt must stink a bitch. Speaking of which, Jesse Tuck never changes his clothes, either. How can Alexis Bledel stand to run through the tall grass with this kid? I mean, he's eternally locked in a sixteen year old boy's body in the early nineteen hundreds before the advent of deodorant. I get nauseous sitting here, thinking about how offensively these characters must reek.

Oh, wait, maybe that's just you.

I'm sorry. Don't listen to me. I mean, that would be breaking some universal clause, wouldn't it? Just because I don't like this dolled up excuse for girly merriment doesn't mean you wont fully submerse yourself inside its traumatic walls. Like I said earlier, the film is built flawlessly, straight from the floor up. It's probably the best children's classic to be done in live action by Disney in at least ten years. It's no Cat From Outer Space, but what is, really? Sure, it doesn't stand next to The Unidentified Flying Oddball, but in the annals of cinematic history, nothing ever really could. Should you see it? Yes; if you're thirteen and a girl. It'll be your film of the decade.

Sadly, no one's making any movie I rightly want to see. Now, if this was about some ugly jerk-off of a film critic, who wandered into the woods to find an unaging Melyssa Ade on her knees, drinking from a puddle at the base of a tree, who wanted that critic to go skinny dipping with her, then I'd have to rethink my whole take on Tuck Everlasting, completely.

Where's my entertaining night at the multiplex, damn you? Can't somebody cure my sickness?