- Studio: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
- Release Date: Aug 15, 2012
- Critic Score
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88Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton are appealing together as far from perfect parents, and CJ Adams has that ability of so many child actors to be pitch-perfect.
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75The kid is a charmer, the message is heartfelt - love your kids while you can - and, OK, the ending might jerk a few tears, even from a crank like me. OK, it did.
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Aug 14, 201270With just the right dose of magic and no shortage of sentiment, this inspirational parenting tale from writer-director Peter Hedges plays like "Mary Poppins" in reverse.
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67The movie should have been called Diary of a Wimpy Forrest Gump. It's genuinely soft-hearted (you're all but guaranteed to cry) but mush-brained, too.
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63The film's earnestness makes up for its high corn factor.
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63Drama/comedy fables such as "Big" and "13 Going on 30" effectively transported viewers to their whimsical alternate reality. But Timothy Green feels more predictable than other-worldly.
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63Hedges is a determined romantic and a bit of a saphead. He's also humane.
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60The midway point between "A.I." and "Diary Of A Wimpy Kid." It has quirky charm and a tender heart, but the treacly sentiment may become wearisome.
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60Odd indeed. In a good way, mostly.
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60A fairy tale about parenting that stays kid-friendly without completely glossing over the darker themes of its premise.
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60It's a magical film in the vein of E.T. where an otherworldly event changes a family forever.
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58The Odd Life Of Timothy Green attempts to stage a modern fairy tale in Middle America. But in spite of an abundance of earnestness, the pixie dust needed to create magic remains out of the film's reach.
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50As anodyne as it is, Timothy Green may represent the last gasp of a genre, the live-action family fable, that has been an entertainment staple for a couple of generations of moviegoers.
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50Hedges has demonstrated his sensitivity to internecine family conflicts and the tenor of small-time life. However, The Odd Life of Timothy Green seems always to be straining for whimsy and wonder.
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50In the end, what mars "Timothy Green" most is its middle-of-the-road approach. Its appealingly quirky, fairy-tale-like center is so coated with sugar, it cloys. It's not that "Timothy Green" is odd, but that it isn't odd enough.
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50If the movie's story is anything but daring, it does takes guts to make a movie so shamelessly emotional as this one. Not that guts are the same as taste.
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50It's the sort of thing you'll either find enchanting or an excellent reason to reach for the Scotch.
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Mar 25, 201340An outdated oddity.
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Aug 16, 201240For all its feints at sensitivity, this isn't a movie, it's a machine, and it's hard not to be impressed - perhaps even awed - by the sheer ruthlessness with which it jerks the tears from your eyes. If anything, a real movie might just have gotten in the way.
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40Although little Timothy does arrive in unusual circumstances, his story will feel familiar to anyone who's encountered Hollywood's particular brand of calculated sentimentality.
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40The ghastliness of this damp and squishy comedy is the byproduct of a confused and earnest sentimentality, a willful devotion to wide-eyed wonder that confuses simplicity with simple-mindedness.
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40This is a movie that confuses teary with sweet. Mopey with sad. Discomfort with humor. And, worst of all, it confuses weird with odd.
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40Not only is the story dreamed up by producer Ahmet Zappa even odder than the title indicates, its execution gets increasingly irritating as the film goes on.
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40What follows is a film as odd as its title character. Timothy flings grown-up ideas at the viewer but rips the teeth from them rather than risk our discomfort.
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Aug 14, 201240Timothy is apparently nothing more than practice for when a real child comes along - at which point the movie's cloying cotton-candy flavor develops a seriously astringent aftertaste.
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40Whatever director Peter Hedges' intent, the movie itself, a sentimental blend of magical realism and saccharine emotions, is oddly false. It made me want to go on a sugar cleanse.
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38Kids are too smart to fall for it, and any grown-up who thinks that The Odd Life of Timothy Green is funny or heartwarming has a head made out of cabbage.
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25The word "sappy" comes to mind, constantly. So often that I wanted to make like a tree and leaf. Frankly I'm stumped, wondering exactly who the audience is for such a drab slab of saccharine uplift.
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Aug 12, 201225Disney draws a big fat bullseye on the fast-growing infertile-couple demographic with this airless misfire.