The Odd Life of Timothy Green - REVIEW

"The Odd Life of Timothy Green" certainly owns up to its gimmick of being a tad bit odd. After all, the titular pre-adolescent, Timothy Green (CJ Adams) isn't exactly your ordinary kid. One rainy night, Timothy magically emerges out of the ground and ends up in the spare bedroom of a North Carolina couple (Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Garner), who want children, but can't medically produce them. This all happens after Cynthia (Garner) and Jim (Edgerton) brainstorm all the ideal qualities their dream child should have and box up and bury their notes in the backyard (coincidentally the same exact spot where Timothy came from).  Yes, it's all the elements of a magical fairy tale, but the ultimate kicker is that Timothy has leaves protruding from his ankles. Odd...right?

"Timothy Green" has all the right intentions as a wholesome family fun. But unfortunately everything about the film is just too perfect and cookie cutter. First and foremost, Timothy is the perfect child: honest, compassionate, obedient, an artist like Picasso, a musician and a game-breaking soccer player. The problem is that it screams obvious fiction by giving one single child all these ideal qualities. Even if Timothy would have had a fault, maybe even two like any normal kid, there would less times when you're taken out of the moment. Granted for Timothy's "parents," they want a flawless son (who doesn't), but perfection has a tendency to feel out more creepy, robotic vibes.

CJ Adams does a fine job with what's he's given with as the titular Timothy, but when there's only so much a child actor can do when burdened with a screenplay seemingly straight from The Hallmark Channel. The same apply to Edgerton and Garner, who are adequate in their own right, but they're spewing line after line of nauseating dialogue, which fails to make them credible as the main players in this fantasy. Writer/director Peter Hedges (how do these puns keep cropping up?) constructs "Timothy Green" in a manner that only smaller children with little knowhow of characterizations will appreciate. But for the rest of us, “Timothy Green” lacks the spark to ignite any sort of definitive investment in what becomes of these characters.

But for all its abundance of ill-conceived Hallmark Channel moments, Hedges maintains a concrete understanding of magic and charm that serves a whimsical modern-day fantasy like this.  A hefty portion of Hedge’s understanding stems from utilizing a color palette of reds, oranges and greens to symbolize Timothy’s connection to nature. For a good chunk of the film, every scene is overpowered with green like it was transported directly from Emerald City in “The Wizard of Oz.” But as summer quickly turns to fall, everything transforms to red and orange still dominating the magical canvas. Like the screenplay, one can only take in so much blatant use of color imagery before it eventually loses its luster. It takes a while, yes, but when the final act rolls around, the threshold’s been crossed.

The overall structure of “Timothy Green” suffers from the get-go as all the events with Timothy are told in flashbacks, providing a bittersweet tale from the start. Garner and Edgerton tells their story to an adoption agency, bit by bit, and though it works fine as moments of reflection and redemption, the scenes up spoiling how the story unfolds. How can we invest in a character in Timothy, only to have a sense of insecurity concerning his fate? Timothy doesn’t evolve and his “big” moments are only dictated by the handful of notes buried in the ground. He comes to his “parents” weird and an outcast and the last time we see him, he’s exactly the same. Timothy never fits in at school or miraculously becomes a popular kid overnight and his relatives see him as a “freak of nature,” even without knowledge of his leaves. For Timothy, his only redemption at character development is a shoehorned love interest who seems to understand what he’s going through.

Honestly as much as the film is supposed to hang on Timothy’s cuteness and awkwardness, the real weight of the story resides with the infertile couple, who are given this chance with Timothy thanks to magic. But even their relationship with Timothy is limited in how far the script takes it, the tension at their actual jobs, several family rivalries and the concept of infertility are key components of investment. This is exactly where the adults will relate and younger audiences will most likely be clueless. Infertility and coping with infertility aren’t glanced over by any means. It’s a core component to the overall story and kids might very well get the impression that children pop out of the ground.

Garner and Edgerton work through the tough adoption agency scenes better than any of the screen time they have with Timothy. In fact, both actors put out some of their strongest moments in each of their own family rival moment. Garner is constantly bombarded by her sister’s (Rosemarie Dewitt) perfectionist attitude, while Edgerton butts heads with his estranged father (David Morse). The standout here is Rosemarie Dewitt, who sinks her teeth into a role that you just love to hate. Her pompous attitude plays off her sibling’s family rather nicely that with that tension onscreen, it becomes the motivational catalyst to actually cheer Timothy on in these few scenes together.

Despite the predictable narrative, “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” does have its moments few and far between what seems to be a solidly paced tale. If director Hedges wasn’t bogged down in making the perfect odd child in the most bogus of circumstances, there might have been something worthwhile watching. For some, “Timothy Green” will be the perfect wholesome family film that can easily be replicated on The Hallmark Channel. And for the rest, it’s simply another live-action Disney film that’ll find it detached from an audience that yearns for a little more. “Timothy Green” isn’t exactly Disney’s weakest release, but a firmer grip on realism would make all the difference.

GRADE: C (5/10)

This review is also available on Blu-Ray.com