Your child may protest that you’re not heading to a film with superheroes and super explosions but believe me, they’ll be drawn into the magic of Timothy Green.
The Odd Life of Timothy Green is a movie that you’re going to love as a parent and that your seven to 12-year-old will end up engrossed in, if you insist that they go.
It doesn’t have a lot of special effects and you don’t need 3D glasses to watch it, but it does feature something far more powerful — wonderful storytelling.
Cindy (Jennifer Garner) and Jim (Joel Edgerton) are a cute, in-love young couple who are desperate to have a family. Sadly, they get the bad news after various fertility treatments that they are never going to conceive a baby of their own.
Garner and Edgerton heartbreakingly and relateably convey the agony of infertility, which so many people can understand. But as they down a bottle of wine to try and numb their pain, they decide to fantasize about what their child would be like. They write down all the child’s wonderful attributes and then bury their tear-soaked papers in a box in the garden of their farmhouse in a mid-western small town.
That’s when the magic begins. A huge storm blows in and the next thing they know an intruder has broken into the house — a dirt-covered boy of about 10 years old.
Meet Timothy Green (CJ Adams). He’s sweet, he’s smart, he’s adorable and he is not a missing kid.
He’s theirs. Remarkably, their dream has come true and they are now parents.
The only extremely strange thing about Timothy — aside from the fact that he has magically appeared out of the garden — is that he has some beautiful green leaves growing out of his legs.
The tale follows Cindy and Jim and they lovingly jump in to over-parenting Timothy, who is seemingly wise beyond his biological age but also completely naive about the conventions of school, family get -togethers and friendship.
Of course his totally innocent faux pas like drawing his mother’s boss’ portrait with the hair on her chin, that no one else will tell her about, provide life lessons and laughs.
You may think the story is so sweet that today’s kids will be too cynical to enjoy it, but I guarantee you, that’s not the case.
My son, Sasha, 11, was completely mesmerized and emotionally connected to Timothy. It was so sweet to see.
Neither you nor your kids will be sorry you let yourselves be drawn into The Odd Life of Timothy Green. Enjoy!
Braden
Posted at 2:05 PM on August 18, 2012
Seriously? Turn off video games?
I’m going to tell you about Halo.
A little boy named John is abducted from his school by the government and trained as a super soldier. He makes countless sacrifices and risks his life for earth against the alien hordes while The Arbiter, an alien traitor leads a species of alien to rebel against the main force of invaders.
Eventually The Arbiter and John team up to finish the fight against the aliens. The Arbiter is accepted by the humans and by the end of the series thinks that John is dead. But he isn’t, he’s just floating through space. He made a sacrifice for the greater good, taking a chance that the humans will look for him (but they won’t; The Arbiter told them he’s dead. I cried here).
John puts himself into a sleep (cryostasis) and tells his Artificial Intelligence companion Cortana to “Wake me when you [Cortana] need me”.
We see here that John has become a tool of war. He has become a weapon. He has lost *dramatic pause* his humanity.
Now THAT, Bonnie, is a story!
Please, don’t hesitate to educate yourself before making a sweeping statement about an entire form of media like video games because, chances are, little Sasha will learn a lot more playing Halo than watching two drunkards somehow create a child by closing their eyes, clicking their heels together and saying; “I do believe in fairies, I do, I do.”