This drama is a must not see. The adaptation of the story is superficial and those among us that seem to think the movie portrays rounded characters just haven't seen enough movies and certainly haven't read this novel. The length of the film alone (88 min.) can tell you that it is impossible to look into their souls. Jesse is the happy brother who wants to live and falls in love with Winnifred (his first love in a 104 years ??) Miles is the angry brother who wants to die. His wife ran away from him, with their two children because she didn't want to drink from the fountain of youth, because she thinks it's the devil's work and thus let their daughter Anna die of pneumonia at 15. Shouldn't he be just a little mad at her as well??? The father is the wise old man. He must be about a 150 and his sons are 104 and about a 115. They should be wise old men themselves by now. Or are we to believe that as the body doesn't grow older the mind doesn't either ? The mother is just the mother, loving and caring and protecting her family when she should. The man that hunts the Tucks is a Tuck himself. He's Miles his grandson but all he's interested in is making money of the spring. No-one else seems to care that he's family as well. Winnifred's character is the worst of all. She's a 10 year old trapped in a young woman's body. The other characters I won't even mention because they are even flatter than the above mentioned main characters from this weak screenplay. It's a very bad adaptation of Natalie Babbit's wonderful novel. In the book our naive Winnifred really is 10 years old. That's why she and Jesse only kiss. JEFFREY LIEBER, the one who is RESPONSIBLE for this bad screenplay, just was to lazy or lacks the talent to let the actions of Winnifred fit the age he has given her or was ordered by the studio to give her. This explains why the young woman in this film takes the challenge of playing some stickball in the beginning of the movie and why at the end of the movie she runs back to daddy instead of following her first true love. All and all the cinematography, the acting and the ending make up for the very very very bad screenplay, but not enough to change my mind about this film. It's just more infantile Hollywood-pulp that murdered a wonderful story. The 1980 British adaptation of this children's novel was a better one......
Review of Tuck Everlasting
