Kidco

This is one that I wish I could have seen as a child. As an adult I know just too much of the realities of business to believe everything in the story. But, it was simple enough to toss aside my adulthood and step into my childhood for a while and see the fantasy of this story.

The Cessna children are always hatching schemes to make money, mostly ones that are on left side of legal, but this time they come up with an apparently legal means to fill the bank account. Their father manages a horse ranch and they start mixing the manure with hay to make fertilizer and sell it to, first a golf course, and later other businesses. They do quite well until their competition sics the regulatory agencies and the tax man on them.

The acting isn't always the best, but that only would make it more real for children. I liked this movie, and I suspect that children would also. After all, I don't think its target audience was anyone over the teen years, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was enjoyable to this adult.

Young Scott Schwartz and his three sisters create their own manure company in this sleight little film that is a time-passer and nothing more. Living on a horse ranch, they create a really booming business. However the state starts to breathe down their throats when they want taxes paid on the company's profit. A kid's courtroom drama that feels a bit forced and honestly a bit silly in its final act. Not quite a recommendation here, but still a film that is actually better than you might think. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

KIDCO, which sounds more like a toy manufacturer, expressed some signs of power for its time about getting rich, a major 80s lifestyle theme. The story about selling manure and making big bucks is very unusual, but thought-provoking and imaginative for youths to dream of someday attaining fame and fortune. Unfortunately, that dream becomes a valuable lesson in life when there are trials and drawbacks in operating any kind of business, including lemonade stands, or else eventually getting caught for violating any means of strict regulations. That's the important vital aspect of the film. Targeted at mostly young children, it's too sophisticated and the acting comes up flat, but there is a place in its heart for the fantasy of it all. Talk about an awful lot of kids! A good little film, though ordinary.

Believe it or not, this film was inspired by true circumstances. Four minor children, heirs to Cessna Aircraft's family owners, incorporated and purchased public land in 1979. After selling the rights to their story, it was heavily fictionalized and made into this movie.

I would classify this as family entertainment but with the disclaimer the children use mild profanity occasionally. Nothing that a 6th grader couldn't handle, especially taking into consideration the filth children are exposed to these days. It is both a light-hearted fantasy and a glimpse into the nature of entrepreneurship and owning/running a business. (There are some glaring errors, such as no one under 18 can enter into a contract without the signature of a parent or legal guardian. Also, you must be 18 in most states to form a corporation.)

The children give really good performances. I did laugh out loud here and there, although there are plenty of moments the dialogue falls flat, or at least feels forced. The last half takes a more complicated tone, but the ending rounds it out.

Don't take it too seriously. This isn't Chekhov or Shaw. Let it be what it mostly is--good fun.

KIDCO is a very watchable movie about children creating a Fertilizer Distribution Business, resulting in these children being sued by a rival Fertilizer Salesman (the character of Orville Peterjohn) who once held local dominance in town. Orville Peterjohn, angry at losing his monopoly on his Fertilizer Sales business decides to sue KIDCO under a variety of corporate regulations, state requirements for submitting documentation to the variety of agencies as well as failure to pay sales tax. The courtroom drama being precisely a strong Conservative message (without dipping into hysterical rants) about how there are too many forms to submit for approval in the basic creation of a new business entity. The movie plays out with some tiny "twist surprises" in the courtroom scene, but at no time drives off into insultingly stupid territory or insults the children as human beings or insults the legal system (as it is) despite having the courts becoming "the tool of oppression" working on the behest of the character of Orville Peterjohn.

The children here are wonderfully sane, rational, logical, emotionally normal, and very human. The courts, family, and townspeople all remain believable human beings and not grotesque insane idiotic parodies of human beings as is so common in "children's entertainment" these days. The movie moves through the story at an enjoyable energetic pace and did not bore me as a viewer. There are no explosions or cartoon characters or "zany sound effects" or digital animation, just regular human people of a normal intelligence level sanely seeking to better themselves and their families with creative wit and enduring the challenges of a short realistic courtroom drama about defending their interests from the tyranny of a business rival.

My summation is that this movie is wonderfully not insulting to the intelligence of the children or the adults viewing this movie.

If your children are vapid overstimulated psychotic idiots, then you should take them to go see "The Bee Movie". If you want better for your children and your children want a better life for themselves, then get them a copy of this movie.

======== KIDCO did have a few minor audio editing problems (no audible audio distortion or distracting unnatural audio noises, just a bit more editing was needed to lessen standard human audio of feet shuffling bodies as they flump into a sitting position on chairs and so on). The movie was professionally lit and framed to best set the proper mood for the movie in a natural manner. The acting was exceptional for a movie for children and the script, although only simplistic at points to not drag the movie into tedium.

Ron Rifkin provides a very comprehensive (and handsomely bearded) performance as the lawyer for the plaintiff.