OxfordPress.com

Grade: B-

Verdict: If nothing else, it's heartfelt.

Details: Starring Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin and Hope Davis. Directed by Scott Hicks. Rated PG-13 for bully violence, sexual situations and scary themes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: “Hearts in Atlantis” has its heart in the right place and a possible Oscar nomination for Anthony Hopkins. But that still doesn't make it the movie it could have (should have?) been. Though it's hard to say what that movie would be.

Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman has culled two stories from the 1999 Stephen King collection that gives the picture its title. Perhaps that's the reason the movie seems to waver between low-key mysticism à la “The Green Mile” and sun-kissed nostalgia à la “Stand by Me.” It's the summer of 1960. Eleven-year-old Bobby (Anton Yelchin) has a dead dad and a bitter widowed mom (Hope Davis) whose idea of a great birthday present is an adult library card. Sure, it's educational, but Bobby rightly suspects that it's also free, leaving her more money to spend on her wardrobe.

Luckily for Bobby, their new boarder is a quietly mysterious loner named Ted (Hopkins) who provides the boy with a much-longed-for father figure. Ted dispenses fascinating literary aphorisms as well as offering to pay Bobby a dollar a day to read the newspaper to him. One other thing: Bobby is to keep an eye out for the “low riders,” who, says Ted, “wear dark clothes and cast long shadows.”

It seems that Ted has a gift. A psychic gift most likely, since he falls into deep trances and can read minds. But what does it mean? Director Scott Hicks (“Shine”) uses this tingly Kingism to suggest any number of things. Is it sinister? Bobby's closeness to Ted seems to mean that he can outplay the card shark at a local carnival. Or is it nothing more than a caring man's intuition? When Bobby asks how Ted knew he wanted a bike, Ted shrugs, “All kids want bikes.”

Bobby's other important companion this fateful summer is Carol (Mika Boorem), a charming tomboy about to become a drop-dead beauty. The ever-prescient Ted tells Bobby that their first kiss will be “the one by which all others are judged.”

“Hearts in Atlantis” is probably not the movie by which all other Stephen King adaptations will be judged. It doesn't stand up to “Stand by Me” or “The Green Mile” or “Misery” (also scripted by Goldman).

Rather, what's onscreen comes off as a kind of mismatch. Here's a small, insightful movie that's been Hollywood inflated — as if all the big names attached (Hopkins, King, Hicks, Goldman) demanded of the producers a big movie treatment. The elements remain dynamic, but they don't pull together. Still, “Hearts in Atlantis” often comes together in a fine way. The relationship between Yelchin and Hopkins is especially lovely, with Sir Anthony doing his kindly quizzical thing instead of his fiendishly quizzical thing as Hannibal Lecter.

Perhaps the best work is by Davis, who's been relegated to a pretty thankless one-dimensional role (it's supposed to be even worse in King's book). Yet her story may be the most poignant of all — a pretty thing whose pretty-thing life got derailed. Her tight sweaters and swirling man-bait dresses are as sad as they are desperate.

At its best, the movie has that "a tale told" quality that Goldman used so winningly in "The Princess Bride." And in these uncertain times, "a tale told" predictability can be awfully comforting.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, (none)