The very things that so pissed them off.......the movie's wild shifts of tone, its careening swerves into disparate genres, and its demented-beyond-belief, fly-off-the-rails Act Three......we LOVED IT!
We joyously celebrated this movie's determined goal to be as batshit crazy as it can get......for the simple reason that it doesn't look or sound like the machine-tooled, spam-in-a-can product that studios flood the Multiplexes with........(and led to one of their worst summer box office records ever......)
And we especially love that no amount of studio tinkering could have made this movie remotely normal or sane. We doubt they even tried.......as all you wild 'n crazy internet kids say....it is what it is.....
We strained our fading brain to recall any film that's comparable to "The Book Of Henry"......the closest example we could come up with is 1992's "Radio Flyer", a misbegotten attempt to blend Spielbergian family whimsy with very real child abuse.
That movie, in which a little boy supposedly (depending on your interpretation) flies off into the sunset in his little red wagon to escape his abusive stepfather, confounded its studio. They fired the film's writer-director, David Mickey Evans, replacing him with steady old pro Richard Donner.........presumably to put a more professional sheen on the film, while severely dialing down its inherent lunacy. The result, to no one's surprise, was a neither-fish-nor-fowl oddity that found little favor with audiences.
"The Book Of Henry", written by thriller novelist Gregg Hurwitz, treads the same ground, minus the outright fantasy.........although the twists and turns of the film's plot are as zany and fantastic as anything in a Harry Potter movie....
The film comfortably begins steeped in l980's Spielberg-iana.......centered around Henry, an endearing ll year old genius, his little brother and their blatantly immature, video-game addicted, waitress mom. (superb work here from Naomi Watts).....you half expect this family to stumble upon a return visit from E.T.......
In addition to pumping up the family finances with his Wall Street wizardry, Henry sets out to rescue his schoolmate and next door neighbor Christina, whose sweet spirit is methodically being destroyed by sexual abuse at the hands of her monstrous stepfather....
And that's as far we go......we wouldn't dare make any futile effort to describe the 360 degree turns this film makes in the course of its running time....
Let's just say that if you dug deep enough into the accumulated mountain of chaos this film heaps upon itself, you might extract one single decent drama out of it.....
But the filmmakers here fully embrace the chaos and in the film's final third, unleash a tidal wave of dopey contrivances and plotting that most screenwriters and directors would run screaming from. Not this bunch.......and you know what? More power to 'em!
Movies like this could flourish in the 60's and 70's, movies that could slip through the studio system even though throwing out all the accepted rules of storytelling. For a film
like "The Book Of Henry" to pop up in the middle of our current Corporate moviemaking atmosphere.....it's something of a damn miracle......
BQ says to hell with all those critics who dumped on 'Henry'......we hereby adopt this movie with 4 stars (****) and promise to nurture and care for it forever.....and allow our little movie to proudly fly its freak flag to one and all.....
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