Main cast: Bruce Willis (Russ Duritz), Spencer Breslin (Rusty Duritz), Emily Mortimer (Amy), Lily Tomlin (Janet), and Jean Smart (Deidre LaFever)
Director: Jon Turteltaub

I am from the school of thought that kid actors shouldn’t try too hard to be cute. Cute child actors are usually synonymous with overacting and over-giggling. And in this movie, with Jon Turteltaub’s trademark melodrama paw prints all over it, has a disgusting (or is it “cute”?) child actor. I’m sure the actual Spencer Breslin is a happy and well-adjusted boy, but Rusty? Gag that bugger, somebody!

This movie has a decent script, but the actual execution is mired in high-handed preachiness that it is hard to muster up any warmth for it, much less “Aw, I’m touched!” sentiments. This movie is more Simon Birch than The Sixth Sense.

Russ is 40, balding, unmarried, unhappy, and bored, meets his eight-year old self Rusty. Well, since Rusty is fat and a pushover and Russ isn’t, no wonder Russ has amnesia about his childhood. Anyway, together, they both rediscover the joys of life, the rainbow at the horizon, and other crap.

It is these crap elements that attracted me to watch Disney’s The Kid in the first place, but ugh, I may like to think of myself as a romantic, but I draw a line at drowning in such sugar. Yes, life is wonderful like Louis Armstrong sings about, but not when it’s made into this Care Bear movie with humans in it instead of those horrid bears. Bruce Willis tries, the ladies struggle and almost steal the show, but really, they can’t escape drowning in the sickening saccharine permeating this movie.