The Boat Builder

I have been a Christopher Lloyd for many years, of course as Doc Brown but even before that as Reverend Jim in the old Taxi TV series. He is the old boat builder Abner in this title and truthfully in this small movie without him it probably would not be worth a watch. The script is often very clumsy and many actors just aren't very good at all, but Abner is always authentic.

Filmed mostly in the Pacifica, California area, on the coast just south of San Francisco, Abner is a retired sea-going captain and is building this 20-odd foot sailboat on his property. But zoning prohibits that and when neighbors complain he has two weeks to get the boat out of there. An orphan boy living temporarily with his relatives comes to Abner's aid, what starts out as an adversarial one turns into a friendly relationship.

As I said, a good smaller move for Lloyd, interesting and entertaining. My wife and I watched it on Amazon streaming movies.

In IMDB and other film review channels there is 'The Plot' & often 'The Plot Summary'. The plot for this film is so weak that they are one and the same! The film is very linear from beginning to end. Old hermit building a sailing sloop as his lifetime hobby. He has no need of people and enjoys his own company. Local kids tease him. One young kid befriends him. They complete the boat together. The boat is launched (you don't see any of these completions or launch - the film budget must have been like < $10k). Then the old hermit, Captain Crazy finds that the young boy stowed away on the boat but is not too unhappy about it. The film ends. It's kind of like.... I went to the beach, I dug a hole, I played in the water, I drank lemonade, I went home. If this film receives scores of 1 or 2 I can understand it. Each actor played his or her part like they were forced into do it under duress. I've still given it 6/10 and that is only because this could be Christopher Lloyd's penultimate self performance. After all he is 80 years old now.

Ok - I'm a person of faith and I tend to like movies with a good moral storyline, BUT I like them to be well written and even plausible. This movie is not - either plausible or well written. In my opinion it's worth 3 stars - and even that is a stretch.

What happened to the end of the movie... it had potential, but it was slow and lacked meat. We only got half of the bones.

The premace to the story was interesting, but it lacked substance, development of the characters and, in a few words, they only presented the cliff notes. The movie left me speechless and the review has to be 600 words, so many more that the dialog in the movie. I usually like Christopher Lloyd and I really liked the young boy. Shame on the daughter for not understanding her father's predicament and the boys uncle was absolutely clueless. The scenery was beautiful and the locale was stunning.

I began watching this movie with the assumption it was going to be a simplistic feel-good movie. Though my expectations were low I was up for something that offered hope and happiness. Little did I know it would be a trial. The only reason I continued to view this movie is because of my admiration for Christopher Lloyd's willingness to provide such a quality performance despite the painfully poor acting around him and weak script.

The story is oft told of the grumpy codger whose rough edge is chiseled away by a child who has social issues of his/her own. So this story is not unique. The script is not only unoriginal, it is forced, awkward, and immature as if it was written by one of my middle school students. The acting (Lloyd being the exception) is unnatural, robotic, and lacks any convincing emotion.