The Kid

Reviewed by: Suad Bejtovic, Bosnian Movie Critic

Directed by: John Turteltaub

Starring: Bruce Willis, Spencer Breslin

Maybe one day, someone in Disney saw Sixth Sense, appreciated the widely unnoticed Bruce Willis' role, and decided to pair him up with a boy again. Strangely enough, even though The Kid is cinematically as far from Sixth Sense as a movie can be, the chemistry between Willis and the youngster, this time chubby Spencer Breslin, worked again.

In The Kid, Willis is Russ Duritz, a ruthless image consultant, who tells everybody like it is, or at least his interpretation of it. He's good, and therefore, he is tolerated by big hotshots like sports club owners and congresspeople. The movie tries to convince us that as a person, however, he is not as good, and in the opening few sequences, Willis has been more of a villain than in the rest of his career combined. Everybody knows that won't last, and it doesn't, because in his life bursts Rusty, his eight year old self. Rusty is a kid with kid's dreams and simple goals in life: to have a female companion, to have a dog and to fly jets. On the other hand, he's the punching bag for the schoolyard bullies, which drives him to work hard to become Russ, almost a bully himself, his main satisfaction in life coming from knowing that he is far more powerful and rich than any of his childhood peers. Russ and Rusty see the other version of themselves as a loser, for different reasons. Together, however, they will fight the demons of their past and future, towards the final redemption.

Although it may sound formulaic, The Kid is a likeable movie, with many sincere laughs, and with a few misty-eyed moments. Its stabs at psychoanalysis and the meanings of life are, of course, over the top, but the action that is driving the movie is always focused, so the viewer doesn't really care about different how's and why's. It's a typical Disney movie, made for children, but very watchable by accompanying adults, addressing certain issues that are in the back of all of ours minds; what happened with my dreams, did I grow up to be a loser? Willis is back to his comic routine, flashing his trademark smirk at the slightest provocation, goofing around and working well with Breslin. The supporting cast is very good, too, headed by Lily Tomlin, the secretary/slave for the intense Russ and his dark-eyed coworker with a killer British accent, Ellen Mortimer. My favorite is Jean Smart in the small, but adorable role of Deirdre LeFevre, a southern anchor with the plan to make it in Hollywood. She squeezes out some image-consulting advice from Russ for her silence during a flight at the beginning of the movie, but she'll return the favor with some more down-to-earth advice of her own later.