A week of validation

I get obsessed with seeing certain movies.

It all began spending hours perusing the walls of movies at Goodtime Video in Orem. They had an alcove that was devoted to Disney movies, including all the weird live-action movies that most people have forgotten about (The Black Arrow, Herbie Goes Bananas, The Apple Dumpling Gang Take Manhattan, etc.). When we went to Goodtime, the kids got to choose a movie usually from the Alcove of Disney. One movie that had caught my eye for several months was Night Crossing which, according to the back of the movie, was a harrowing tale of balloon-building and balloon-floating in East Germany. I was hooked. My older siblings were not. It took me a few months to get the nerve to even suggest that we get it, and when I did suggest it, it was shot down like a giant hot air balloon floating to West Germany.

I didn't limit my looking to just the Alcove of Disney though. I probably looked at every movie in the place and checked the rating on each movie. I chanced across one called the Mosquito Coast that was...a harrowing tale of civilization-building in Central America. I lobbied for that movie for years but never got anywhere like a deflated hot air balloon.

But, one evening, my siblings made the critical error in letting me accompany my dad to Goodtime alone. He wouldn't rent the Mosquito Coast as the kid movie, but a Disney movie about ballooning? Sure, why not? The response when I got home was not one of "Sure, why not?" when I proudly showed that we had rented Night Crossing, but more of "The stupid balloon movie? Were not watching THAT!" And they refused to watch it with me. Thus, began my lonely odyssey of watching unpopular movies by myself. I didn't remember much from Night Crossing, so I didn't know if it was really as terrible as everyone thought it was.

 After two decades, an amazing confluence of events brought me to a couch watching the Mosquito Coast AND Night Crossing within a week. The amazing confluence of events was Christina was off at book group and the Mosquito Coast had arrived from Netflix. And, then after describing how long I had wanted to see it and describing the Night Crossing incident, Christina put Night Crossing to the top of the queue.

The real question: Did they live up to expectations?

First, The Mosquito Coast. Need we ask the question? Peter Weir directing Harrison Ford in a Behold! The Hubris of Man movie? A classic. Loved it. In the reviews I read after I watched the movie, there was a lot of talk about how great River Phoenix is in it as the oldest son. I was more stunned by the younger son, who goes from idolized his father to homesickness to loathing of his father and back to love. Pretty impressive for a ten-year-old. I don't think he was ever in another movie.

Second, Night Crossing. If it were not for John Hurt, the movie would be a disaster. But Hurt takes a Disneyfied script, wooden children actors, and some rotten co-stars, throws the movie on his back, finds the emotional core, and sucks it to the surface. After Hurt saves the first half of the movie, the director steps in and builds some nice tension over the second half of the movie such that Christina and I were both sucked in. What seemed to be a potential disaster in the first ten minutes had us goosebumping in the final ten.

So, Young Doug, bravo young man. You DID possess preternatural good taste in movies for a 10-year-old. And, like Harry Truman, history has validated you.