Jack

Francis Coppola has made movies of almost every stripe, but the most atypical has got to be Jack, a gooey tale that features Robin Williams as a ten-year-old boy. Yes, you heard correctly. What's perhaps more surprising is that I did not hate it.

To be sure, Jack is treacly and obvious, but maybe I was just in the mood for corny Hollywood bromides. Or maybe it's that Coppola, who must have sat in his director's chair during the shooting of this and wondered, "How did I get here?" managed to pull enough rabbits out of his hat to make this film, if not good, at least not vomit inducing. Or maybe it's that Williams, aware that most people of good sense would run shrieking from a film in which he played a ten-year-old, summoned a great deal of restraint.

Jack, played by Williams, has a disease in which he ages at four times the rate of a normal person. Thus his mother, Diane Lane, goes into labor after only ten weeks of pregnancy, and by the time he's ten, Jack looks like a forty-year-old. He's kept inside the house by his parents, afraid that he'll be seen as a freak, and he's tutored by Bill Cosby, who urges them to let him experience the world. They finally let Jack go to school, and after some initial problems he becomes popular, especially considering how he dominates on the basketball court and his ease at buying dirty magazines (there's no mention of the other thing he could buy the kids--liquor).

But of course Jack never quite fits in. He gets a crush on his teacher (Jennifer Lopez) and when she tactfully turns down his request to go to a dance with him he has an attack of angina. He starts to realize the math and that he will not live all that long, and has a memorable night in a bar, where he flirts with his best friend's mom, Fran Drescher. All turns out okay, though, especially with the all-knowing Cosby helping out.

This film doesn't really say anything that Big, with Tom Hanks, didn't say much better, and that film went the extra mile and let its character get laid. But as a kid who always felt awkward in school, I appreciated certain touches, and until a maudlin ending, in which Williams, old and decrepit, gives his class's valedictory address, I didn't want to throw anything at the screen.

This film was released in 1996, and would be Coppola's last film for more than a decade. He's made a couple since then, which I'll get to next week. I'm sure he's glad this did not turn out to be his last film.