Just You and Me, Kid

Less than a half hour in, and I already love this!

Some favorite parts: George Burns singing, the score of the film, the way his kitchen looks, a young and beautiful Brooke Shields, and just the light tone of the whole thing! Gosh, I just love it! Because of this movie, I will now have to check out other George Burns films, because I am now hooked! Though this is not the first movie I've seen him star in, it's the first time I've been present enough to really pick up on what I charming screen presence he has!

Update: Finished it, and what a top notch cast! I wasn't expecting so many memorable people, such as Christopher Knight from The Brady Bunch, Burl ives, and others. This is so worth seeing!

Side note: I have quite a little crush on George Burns, I've just realized. I'm quite smitten with his voice and demeanor.

This hidden gem makes a lot of modern "comedies" look like the wastes of time they are. This is social commentary farce at its best. A "street smart" teen girl who is in trouble with a criminal "boyfriend" getting her fanny pulled out of the fryer by a more than able but branded "senile" (even by his own daughter) older man. This film is a perfect look at where we are now and how younger generations need to sometimes stop and be silent before they cause more trouble. At 42, I can say that because I can see precisely where Kate went wrong and where Bill did everything right. LOL

Now in all seriousness, this is a brilliant work, with an icon of the previous generation working with someone who would later become an icon of the next, in a light and breezy but very likable and coherent plot of a comedy. Two people with absurd individuals around them finding common ground, but his was supposed to be a bomb?? This film was made for an audience that had not matured yet, and now it is being seen by many as the classic it is.

No matter how innocent the movie makes itself out to be this has an uncomfortable creepy quality to it. Brooke Shields at just 12 plays a girl on the run from a Pimp and neglected but all this is played for comedy in a light hearted tone and PG rating which just doesn't fit with the subject matter. It has the look and feel of a made for TV movie, it mostly takes place in 1 house, and it's just the same basic thing for over an hour. I also thought the father daughter relationship wasn't handled at all well, On Golden Pond is a much better film about an Eccentric father, a resentful daughter and a teenager. Here characters have no real development, some if the acting and dubbing is off, the music is painfully dated, Brooke Shiekds at 12 is introduced half naked, it's meant to be funny.

I'd much rather recommend About a Boy infrastructure, a far better more intelligent movie.

There's a few funny lines here, and I don't really blame the cast who are doing their best, it just doesn't work as a movie.

This movie comes from a time when movies were still movies. No quick cuts, only one popular music track, but a good old fashioned story of a grandfatherly former Vaudevillian befriending a troubled teen.

You've got to love George Burns. You just have to. There's no reason not to. To me his quips, even though I understood the humor when this movie hit the theatre, is more endearing and funnier now with more punch than when I first saw the film.

That, and the humor is clean without being childish. It's smart without having to be high-minded. The script is witty and Burns' performance is on the money for a man of his caliber or character.

And there's Brooke, who, unlike her later roles, actually does a pretty decent job of portraying the wayward teen. Brooke knows this girl's character and is given fairly decent direction as to how to portray her.

If I had one complaint it's that dialogue, at times, seems a little too mature for Booke's character, but that's more of a fault of the old guard Hollywood screenwriters who channel themselves through the characters they pen.

Veteran stars come in to play support roles making for a very likable hour and a half light comedy. The plot driving the story forward is a little hard, but socially responsible films function to show the pitfalls of possible criminal behavior, and how innocents (and not so innocent) get caught up in nefarious doings. As such we have a light tone for what could have been a hard look at teenage delinquency.

George Burns and Brooke Shields actually have a pretty good chemistry here, almost that one wishes they had done a few more films together.

Either way, the film is now out on DVD thanks to SONY and Columbia Pictures archives. Grab a copy and watch it on a lazy weekend afternoon.

Enjoy.

After his best friend Jack Benny passed away in 1974, George Burns took over his role in Herbert Ross's brilliant adaptation of 'The Sunshine Boys,' winning himself an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in the process. Burns enjoyed something of a career resurgence, going on to make five films in the next five years. 'Oh, God!' might be the best of the lot, or Martin Brest's 'Going in Style.' It certainly isn't 'Just You and Me, Kid,' a movie so misjudged, saccharine-sweet and predictable that watching it sometimes feels like a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

Burns stars as a vaudevillian comedian whose quiet life is upended when he finds Brooke Shields in the trunk of his car, who is fourteen, naked and on the run. The kindly Burns agrees to shelter the girl, as the cartoonishly cruel drug-dealers she's escaped from are closing in. The two form a friendship as time marches steadily on, with outside forces constantly threatening to separate them and send Shields back to the criminals. Together, however, they may just take down the drug-dealers once and for all; if Burns and his magic tricks have any say in the matter.

'Just You and Me, Kid' is a poorly written, unimaginative and tonally muddled film that tries in vain to balance drama and light comedy. Leonard Stern's direction is uninspired- in fact, he doesn't seem to have directed the actors at all. Burns really just plays himself, which he's very good at, so it isn't a problem. Shields, though, was very young and could have probably used someone to guide her performance. As it is, she's ridiculously wooden and something of a talent vacuum- it's a pity that she didn't have a more hands-on director to help her, or a good script to work with.

She and Burns have nothing interesting to do together except recite overly cutesy, maddeningly bland lines from the lackluster, predictable screenplay. The comedy is so weak and formulaic that the laughs just don't come. Strangely, the story is full of unnecessary darkness as well- like the inclusion of the drug-dealers- that is at odds with the tone of the rest of the film. There are also many cheap jokes about Burns relationship to Shields, which are really unpalatable, and the dialogue overall is stilted and trite. The supporting characters are all caricatures of little to no depth and the cinematography is flat and ugly.

The most egregious aspect of the film is the fact that Burns is brilliant, and his scenes without Shields have a sad, gentle power. He is effectively playing himself- a widowed comedian in his eighties- and does so effectively. To see him alone going about his business- whether he's remembering his departed wife, visiting a comatose pal, singing a tune or entertaining youngsters with his magic tricks- may not be an original experience, but it is an entertaining one (as well as a glimpse of a better movie that could have been made instead of 'Just You and Me, Kid'). Burns was such a genuinely charming presence that when it's just him, the film almost works.

Why the writers felt the need to destroy what could have been a simple comedy-drama about an aging comedian by concocting this Brooke Shields on-the-run story is unfathomable. Though Burns is terrific, this film is lazy, unfunny and disappointing. While young Shields' wooden performance in the film may not be her fault, it's still a serious problem- though even if she had the talents of a young Jodie Foster the film would still be a dud. The lack of originality from the director- and in the screenplay- doomed this film to the realm of mediocrity long before the cameras started rolling. 'Oh, God!' this is not.