Jack

The Good: This movie is an excellent comedy/drama. Robin Williams does a heart warming performance as Jack, a boy who grows 4 times as fast as a regular boy. There were many funny parts, and many sad parts with a good mix of both. The acting is very good; Robin Williams did a great job of playing a 10 year-old boy.

The Bad: There were a few missing ends to this movie. Some things didn't fit together right. One thing was when he went to jail for getting in a fight at the bar. If he's only 10 years old, aren't the police going to figure it out?!

Overall: Overall, this is a touching movie that I encourage everyone to see. It may not be an Oscar nominee, but all in all it is a good show.

*** 1/2 out of *****

The idea of a child in an adult body has been explored many times before: "Big," "Vice Versa," "Like Father Like Son," "Freaky Friday," and others. In all of those cases it was a hot swap due to some freak accident. In "Jack," Jack Powell (Robin Williams) has accelerated growth due to a fictitious disease that makes him age four times the rate of a normal human being. So when Jack was ten-years-old he had the body of a 40-year-old man and the mind of a ten-year-old boy. You can imagine the myriad complications that can cause.

If anyone could've pulled off the role of Jack it was Robin Williams. Whatever the list of actors for the character it had to have been a very short list. Robin Williams has that natural effervescence and childlike personality which made him perfect.

I liked the movie. It was funny, innocent, and heartwarming. Jack just wanted to be a normal kid like everybody else, but he was far from normal. His entry into elementary school was a rocky one. Inevitably, he was teased (as kids are wont to do), but he was eventually able to meld right into the boys club by just being himself--a ten-year-old.

It's no spoiler to say that he would eventually have to face the fact he was aging rapidly and just how would he handle that. It would be a tough matter for anyone and everyone who loves him. Robin Williams crushed this role and really made the movie good.

Many reviewers have compared this work to Tom Hanks's Big, wherein a young boy wishes he were "big," and the wish is granted. However, this work is the anti-thesis of that work, as an adult portrays a young child, physically, which thrusts Jack into the same venue as Martin Short's "Clifford," which was done some two years prior to this work.

That not withstanding, Clifford was a holy terror, while Jack is a mother's dream. While both works require a total suspension of belief in order to enjoy them, Jack is endearing, sweet, sentimental, and entertaining. There is nothing endearing, sweet, or sentimental about Clifford.

Jack is born with a genetic disorder which causes him to age 4 years for every 10, thereby causing him to appear as a 40 year old man at the age of 10.

Many have bludgeoned Coppola's involvement in such a scheme, citing his prior "masterpiece" works while bemoaning this one. The fans seem to forget that artistic people who do not spread their wings, and plant their feet on strange ground, never grow as individuals and artists.

Some found this work "insulting" due to the premise. It is called unintelligent. But not all films are based on intellect, and not all movie-goers care to have to think in order to enjoy a movie. And there is the added benefit of the heartwarming sentiment carried by this work.

It did well in the box office, nearly doubling its budget, worldwide, and is generally under-rated here at IMDb (if only mildly so), which says that word of mouth (that this film wasn't as bad as the critics said) carried this film further than the negative reviews would have liked.

It rates a 6.2/10 from...

the Fiend :.

Wtf is wrong with this world ... the ratings are just made by simple brain people who have such a pity existence.

I was extremely surprised to find out that Francis Ford Coppola directed this film, not because it's below the standards I expect from him, but because it is really well directed. It's rare that a movie can be so well directed and so bad at the same time. It's hard to pinpoint the exact problem here, until you realize it's all in the writing: moreover, the story. Robin Williams does everything he can for this character, and the story does not reciprocate. The entire cast is a success, in fact. I generally loathe child actors, but these ones are almost believable; Jennifer Lopez nailed a lot of nuanced beats and really surprised me; Bill Cosby was incredibly endearing, despite all of his horrible crimes. The shots and storytelling behind the camera, save for a couple janky inserts, is effective. Yeah, the more I think about it, the clearer this case of bad writing becomes. Not a bad premise, but the execution is hit or miss at best and the ending is woefully dissatisfying. All I needed to know is what he wrote for that essay, but we didn't get it. What a shame.