Last week, Scott and I got a chance to view a screening of an upcoming movie called The Odd Life of Timothy Green. Since then, I've been in-my-head composing, editing, scrapping and starting over the glorious movie review I wanted to write about this movie. As it turns out, I don't know anything about writing a movie review. Having relieved my brain of the pressure to write a Siskel and Ebert (I know Siskel is a little more silent now...) worthy review, I give you my opinion of the movie.
I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I laughed a lot. I cried a lot. I would highly recommend you go see it.
It is an adoption-themed movie, which is what I loved about it. I'm a huge fan of positive adoption stories in the media. Even though this one is fictitious, it's still awesome. As a birthmother, I find myself particularly grateful for adoptive parents. Loving a child that shares your genetic material comes fairly naturally (for a lot of people). Bringing a child into your home and loving that child as if they shared your genetic material? That takes a huge, huge hearted person. I'm so grateful for those people. Specifically, I'm so full of gratitude for the two huge hearted people raising my daughter, Chloe. Melissa and Alvin are darn near saints, if you ask me. In my head I can hear them both saying "We're not perfect!" in rebuttle to that last sentence. I know that, though. Nobody is perfect. But Melissa and Alvin are perfect for Chloe and her brother. They love their children. They nurture their children. They rebuke them when needed. I could not ask for more for my daughter. I just looked up synonyms for grateful: beholden, gratified, indebted, obliged, pleased, thankful. Yes. All of those things. That's how I feel towards Chloe's parents. So of course it was easy to love the two main characters in this movie because they wanted to bring a child into their home to love.
There were a surprising amount of kids at this movie. Since I'm not a kid, I can't really tell you if kids will like this movie or not. There were a lot of kids IN the movie as well, and kids like to watch kids, right? So maybe you can take your kids to see this. :)
The only down side to this movie, as best I can tell, is the vast amount of tears I shed at the end. No spoilers, here, don't worry. I'm just sayin. I had to breathe slowly and carefully, like I was breathing through labor contractions kinda breathing, so as to keep myself from shoulder-shrugging, snot producing, sobbing at the end. You may be thinking "Well, I don't like crying at movies. I don't want to see this." But wait, there's hope for you.
1) I'm pregnant. That means all bets are off for what triggers me to cry in the first place. Also, the amount of crying is frequently disproportionate and illogical to the triggering event due to crazy pregnancy hormones. For example, I heard some sad news recently. No tears. None whatsoever. Then driving home from work this week I accidently ran over a snake in the road. I teared up. I felt so bad. Poor snake just trying to live it's life and gets squished. I hoped it didn't suffer. FOR THE LOVE. IT'S A SNAKE. GOOD GRIEF.
2) I'm a birthmother. What speaks to me during this adoption movie may be completely different than what speaks to you.
3) I went to this movie straight from work. The last thing I did before I left work that evening was attend a delivery a child being placed for adoption. The mom wasn't interested in holding the baby or taking pictures or anything. It made me so sad for her because I'm afraid she'll regret those decisions. Not that she'll regret placing her child for adoption, necessarily, but regret never holding the baby or having a picture of the child. But, she needed to do whatever she felt was best at that moment. What I, or anyone else, thinks of it is irrelevant. I probably could've cried just about that situation alone (see #1 above). To leave work on that note, though, and go to a movie about adoption, there was no hope. There were going to be tears.
So you see, you have a good chance of just having a normal, logical, emotional response to this movie. You know, maybe tear up a little at the end. Something like that...
The Odd Life of Timothy Green hits theaters August 15th. GO SEE IT. And then comment on this post about how many tears you did or didn't shed. :)
View the trailer.
Read a synopsis of the movie.
ps.--I suppose I should say something about getting to view this movie for free, all opinions are my own, I'm not on Disney's pay roll, yada yada yada. There.
