PG-13, 1 hr. 41 min. Directed
by: Scott Hicks. Release Date:
September 28, 2001. DVD Release Date:
July 27, 2004.
I’ve started to watch Hearts
In Atlantis maybe a dozen times over the years, and I’m not sure why I
stopped. It’s probably because Stephen
King and metaphysics (in my mind) don’t generally equate out to a happy mix, as
is the case in The Langoliers and god
help us all, Rose Madder. My grandmother gave me a Stephen King book
about a guy who could teleport himself in to a fantasy world that may or may
not have been the Queen’s garden from Alice
In Wonderland, and I wanted to scratch my eyes out by the time I finished
it. I still love my grandmother after
that, but maybe not as much.This was a bit mellow, and frankly, a bit like other King
works that I’ve read over the years, as well as one Koontz book about folks who
got super powers after being injected with a mysterious serum. Sound familiar?
Anthony Hopkins was kind of running around being psychic,
but it wasn’t as showy as other works by King would be. I actually would have been okay if he’d been
more overtly psychic, with mind reading and special effects, but not much
more. It was a tool I’ve used elsewhere
before, most recently in Push,
wherein a character that we see for only a few seconds in the film has not only
predicted the entire series of complicated events with unerring accuracy, she’s
set half of them in motion while imprisoned.
Like Push, Hopkins
clairvoyance generally serves to drive the story forward and remind us that
just because it’s the 60s doesn’t mean the story has to be boring.
Hopkins, unsurprisingly, basically carried the entire cast
through this movie, with the arguable exception of a very young Anton
Yelchin. When Hopkins isn’t in a scene
for very long, the movie begins to drag something terrible. Story-wise, I also thought there was too much
other stuff going on in the wings. The
primary story revolves around Hopkins, but there are also side stories that
involve Yelchin and his first love, Yelchin and a friend, Yelchin, the
girlfriend and a bully, and Yelchin’s mother.
I’m also wondering whether or not Yelchin’s mother shouldn’t have given
her son to Hopkins and walked out of his life.
It’s a bit of a weird role, and I have to wonder why she was made to be
such a bad parent. While it sets the
stage for her actions at the end of the film, it made me hate her.
Chances are good that most of you have seen this already,
but if you haven't, it might be worth checking out. I had thought I would hate this movie, but I
can’t really tell you why. I was
pleasantly surprised by my reaction, although I did find some of the later
“dramatic” scenes to be poorly written.
