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If you go to see Tuck Everlasting expecting another lighthearted Disney romp, you're in for a bit of a shock. The film is surprisingly glum, delivering a grim moral message to its pre-teen target audience (anyone younger will be bored to tears and miss said lesson).
Set in 1914, in the tiny town of Treegap, Everlasting stars Gilmore Girls' Alexis Bledel as 15-year-old Winnie Foster, the only child of an obscenely wealthy couple (Alias costars Amy Irving and Victor Garber) that forbids her from doing anything remotely fun. Like any normal teenager, Winnie rebels and ends up running away from home when her folks threaten to cart her off to a private school that will make for even less fun (this is what happens when your mom isn't as cool as Lorelai Gilmore).
Taking off into the woods near her house, Winnie sees a stranger taking a drink out of a spring. He is Jesse Tuck (Jonathan Jackson, Insomnia), and before Winnie can even start to fall for the dreamboat, she's scooped up by his brother Miles (Scott Bairstow, TV's Breaking News), who fears she might have discovered the clandestine Tuck Family Secret. Winnie is hauled back to the Tuck homestead deep within the forest, where she meets the heads of the family (William Hurt and Sissy Spacek) and slowly begins to realize the bucolic bunch are a little bit off.
The Tucks' secret isn't really much of a surprise (you can figure it out from the trailer), so I'll tell you what it is: Drinking from the spring makes you immortal. The Tucks are afraid Winnie will spill the beans about their secret if they let her go. But this is where Everlasting starts to get interesting. The Tucks aren't hoarding the magical spring for themselves - they're protecting people from it. They hate living forever and don't want anyone else to have to experience their misery. It's the whole "the grass is always greener" thing, with Winnie thinking, "You get to live out here in the woods and have fun," while the Tucks think, "Yeah; well, you get to die." Definitely not your typical Disney film.
Meanwhile, there is an antagonist in the oddly named Man in the Yellow Suit (wasn't he in the Curious George books?). Here, Suit is played by Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast) in a surprisingly restrained performance which features very little ham (a rarity for a kids' movie baddie these days). He's hip to the Tucks and their secret, so there's that whole thing going on, as well as the burgeoning PG romance between Winnie and Jesse.
I thought the Tucks were bunch of dullards, but I guess they're supposed to be. They can't get close to anyone because it hurts too much to watch friends die. Winnie, on the other hand, is quite the revelation. Bledel's is a great, star-making performance, wonderfully aided by the sunbathed work of director Jay Russell and cinematographer James L. Carter (both of My Dog Skip fame). Bledel's lips have never been redder, eyes never bluer, hair never more fabulous. The pastoral settings are gorgeous as well.
The most glaring problem with the film is the magical spring - if it takes only one drink to make you immortal, why didn't they just board that shit up? Instead, the Tucks keep using it. Incidentally, Everlasting has already been a movie, with a 1980 version filmed in Lockport starring the late Sonia Raimi as the Tuck matriarch.
1:28 - PG for some violence
========== X-RAMR-ID: 33094 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 793634 X-RT-TitleID: 1115776 X-RT-SourceID: 595 X-RT-AuthorID: 1146 X-RT-RatingText: 6/10
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