Image from IMDb.cm

Image from IMDb.cm

Family Movie Night

By Karyn Bowman

New Year’s Day always brings out the resolution list for me. Being that it is my birthday as well, it seems like a doubly good reason to set goals for the coming year.

The most popular ones are counted as quitting smoking and losing weight. In the last few years, I vowed to eat healthier and exercise more which had lead to a drop of about 40+ lbs. It wasn’t easy, took longer than I thought it would and is totally worth it.

I always vow to write more, to see more movies, and to spend more time with my family.

One of the movies I was finally able to watch this past week is about making change, it is about hope when there seems to be none. When my daughter saw that The Odd Life of Timothy Green was actually in, she grabbed it for our movie night. This is a movie I would watch with tweens and older. I do not think many children under the age of 10 would want to watch this movie because the pacing is too slow for them.

The story is about a couple who have tried nearly every way possible to have a child. Finally they have been given the news that there is nothing more the doctors can do, they are not going to have a child the old fashioned way.

So that night, in the midst of their disappointment and despair, Jim Green (Joel Edgerton) begins to write his idealistic aspects of the child he is never going to have. His wife, Cindy (Jennifer Garner), joins him in the exercise. Then they put the pieces of paper in a box and bury it in a garden, making the hardest resolution of all. They say goodbye to their dream of having a child.

Later that night, a thundering storm comes through. The couple wake up, hearing a loud noise downstairs. While getting everything settled back into place is when they discover Timothy. A nine-year-old boy has suddenly appeared in their house. He has leaves on his ankles and there is a hole in the garden where the box was planted.

What can they do but what they do which is to love him. They accept him in their family and start being parents. Interestingly enough, they learn the hardest lesson of parenting during the short time Timothy is in their life. As you can imagine there is a sad part of this movie and a happier ending. It is a movie where fairy tale endings can and do happen.

More than that, Timothy Green leaves us feeling hopeful, he inspires the American can-do spirit without the meanness. The boy reminds his adopted parents and us that anything is possible. While the violent movies as of late show us one way to solve our problems, it is not practical nor morally correct to take a machine gun to places that anger us. Instead, this movie encourages us to think of new ways to solve our problems – whether it is making a different pencil or becoming a parent.

Until next week, see you in the rental aisle.

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