THE MIGHTY (38)

Directed by: Peter Chelsom

Starring: Elden Henson, Kieran Culkin, Sharon Stone, Gillian Anderson

The Pitch: Two teenage misfits - one big and slow-witted, the other small and brilliant (and dying of a rare bone disease) - band together in a brain-and-brawn relationship.

Theo Sez: You feel kind of bad smirking at this film : it puts its head so obligingly, so innocently on the chopping-block, wholly unembarrassed by (maybe even proud of) its Message-laden whimsy (kids, don't make fun of people who are different ; oh, and read more books). Sensitively done, in truth - as anyone who suffered through SIMON BIRCH can attest - with a minimum of glutinous speeches and both boys excellent, Culkin bringing charisma to an impossible role, the brave little genius cracking wise to cover up his pain ("Old people! You gotta reassure 'em!"), Henson finding goodness beneath a coiled, watchful quality ; but I have to say it lost me right from the opening credits, piping jolly, pseudo-Irish music over shots of an urban-industrial landscape. It operates by putting the gritty side-by-side with the ethereal, placing the boys amid street gangs and broken families then floating up to their dreams and longings ("There's a place I go in my head sometimes..."), lousy with the kind of voice-over that poeticises everything and repeats key phrases for emotional effect : it's basically a dishonest film, giving itself a 'tough' veneer so it can milk tears more efficiently. Three strikes and out for Mr. Chelsom, a director I'm clearly not in tune with - though, amazingly, it almost works, and might've done so with a little understatement : I definitely felt a lump starting to build in my throat in the final minutes, with the wide-shot of the ambulance arriving in the dead of night, and the whole business of the book written as a tribute to a lost friend ; then it went too far, bringing on the friend's little plane flying free (free, like his soul!) way over the tree-tops, and mythical Knights looking skywards with a kindly smile as violins swelled and the camera soared - and the lump was gone.