Tuck Everlasting

Tuck Everlasting was one of the best movies I've ever seen.It was the perfect mix of romance and drama. It was also sooo sad. Especially when Jesse said "Winnie Foster I will love you til the day I die." It was also sad at the end when Jesse visited Winnie's grave. This is one of those rare occasions where the book is as good as the movie. The acting and casting were great as well. THe ones who played Jesse and Miles were very good looking! I just loved everything about this movie. It was so sad though! I actually cried when I watched it. It was a great plot, storyline, acting, everything! THis was definitely one of the best movies I've ever seen. THere was nothing I would change...except Winnie's not drinking the water!

The only reason I enjoyed this movie was because my friends and I completely tore it apart and laughed to death at it. Anyone who has read the book will never want to see this movie, and will probably wish the Tucks didn't have everlasting life so they would die. Before they were even born. The acting was horrible and the storyline was very inaccurate at points. In my opinion (and in anyone's opinion who actually has a cerebrum), if a movie is made off of a book, it should remind you of the book, be accurate, be worthy of its title, etc. Nothing in Tuck Everlasting came close to fulfilling that. This movie should be renamed "Bring arsenic with you, so you can fulfill your urge to drink it once the movie is over!". I don't even remember the things my friends and I said that made this movie so laughable, but you can easily come up with your own. The actors are ugly, Winnie is supposed to be ten years old (and Alexis Bledel may be cute and look young, but she is nowhere near the age of ten), and the acting is pathetic. I would almost get more entertainment from reading Walden by David Thoreau.

In 1914, brothers Jesse Tuck (Jonathan Jackson) and Miles Tuck (Scott Bairstow) return to Treegap and their parents Angus (William Hurt) and Mae Tuck (Sissy Spacek) followed by a mysterious man (Ben Kingsley) in yellow. Winifred Foster (Alexis Bledel) is eager to live without the control of her parents (Amy Irving, Victor Garber). They own much of the forest. Winnie encounters Jesse in the woods drinking from a special spring. Miles kidnaps her back to the Tuck homestead. It's a fine coming-of-age romance. It's very PG. It doesn't have great tension or more importantly, magic. This needs a sprinkle of that Disney magic. The young couple's romance is not that compelling and they are limited in the amount of heat. Their chemistry is strictly overwrought puppy love. There is a chance for a compelling ending reveal but the big reveal in the movie is not that compelling. It tries a little poetry and leaves it less than satisfying.

This is not just a story about a family who will never see their death or even age no matter how much time goes by but it's also about the lessons they teach to people that are either wishing to live outside a life that is too humdrum for them or are too overly eager to have an immortal life like the Tucks. Whether intentional or not, I think that this movie helps send out a message that: No matter what type of life was dealt you, you can still make the most out of it, if you only put a little effort into it. Though set in the early 20th Century, the story makes you forget about the differences of then and now; there's no need to depend on a supposedly 'wiser' individual to clear up the things that you don't understand. Because it was a period movie, the dialog was written to be accurate of that time and it was well done in my opinion. But it was laid out in such a way that the audience, specifically the younger ones, can easily accept the language has being relatively close to their own. This movie was a complete masterpiece from beginning to end. The performances can be summed up in one word: Beautiful. This is the type of movie that you can watch over and over again and it never gets old. I am very proud to have this movie in my collection, which I'm sad and almost ashamed to say doesn't have a lot family films included in it. Perhaps, in the future, more movies will come along that are worthy enough to be labeled: A Great Family Film!

Whilst the actors can be fully commended for their acting, I was very disappointed with the ending and in my opinion it ruined the whole film for me. The fact that the family that drank from that magic spring could live forever is still not something which is unbelievable to readers/viewers, but the claimed fact (by the novelist) that the family could now be completely 'invincible' and 'immune' to being killed by pistol fire/hanging/lynching or any other form of harm is illusory at best. Yes, if they were wounded by pistol bullets, then it is possible to have the wounds healed by the water from magic spring (along with having the bullet removed) but if the bullet pierced essential body parts such as the head or the heart then it is no longer possible for the person to remain alive for long. Just as in the Lord of the Rings where the Elves are immortal as long as they are not killed by orcs/trolls during battle. Even if such a magic fountain existed in America, does one not think that it would have been discovered and extracted by the 20th or 21st century? Surely the Tucker family would have had hundreds of not thousands of descendants who in turn would continue to live at very long ages and therefore raise awareness in the wider American public of their secret? (Take for example, the story of Li Ching-Yuen who purportedly lived for 256 years of age, married 23 times, had 200 descendants, his centenary and bi-centenary were both celebrated by the local authorities whilst he was still alive and then he died in 1933). Lastly, the female main character's choice at the end of the film to not choose to drink from the magic spring thinking that life would be 'boring' and 'meaningless' if they remained alive forever and she'd rather die after living a 'full life', than be immortal and forever stuck watching life pass her by. It gravely encourages Epicurean philosophical thinking which encourages people to "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die". Such a way of thinking is greatly flawed and assumes that one is better off being dead after living a 'meaningful life' than remaining alive forever. For those who are christians would recall from the Bible that Adam and Eve were not given a finite life by God by default and in fact were entitled to eat from the Tree of Life which would enable them to remain alive forever. It was the rejection of God's commands that lead them to become mortal in the flesh and their subsequent unhappiness, pains, hardships & suffering on earth. There is no evidence to suggest that humans are not capable of enjoying a very happy and content life if granted the opportunity to become immortal (it would in fact be the very opposite unless that person happened to be a criminal in which case it would be better off for that person to live a shorter life). Christians believe that those who are eventually eligible to go to heaven would be immortal there because they would have the opportunity to eat from the Tree of Life in Heaven. Hence the conceptual premises of this film are hugely flawed and would only be suitable for children or young teenagers (many of whom would be heart-broken and/or disappointed by the ending of this purely fictional story)

This drama is a must not see. The adaptation of the story is superficial and those among us that seem to think the movie portrays rounded characters just haven't seen enough movies and certainly haven't read this novel. The length of the film alone (88 min.) can tell you that it is impossible to look into their souls. Jesse is the happy brother who wants to live and falls in love with Winnifred (his first love in a 104 years ??) Miles is the angry brother who wants to die. His wife ran away from him, with their two children because she didn't want to drink from the fountain of youth, because she thinks it's the devil's work and thus let their daughter Anna die of pneumonia at 15. Shouldn't he be just a little mad at her as well??? The father is the wise old man. He must be about a 150 and his sons are 104 and about a 115. They should be wise old men themselves by now. Or are we to believe that as the body doesn't grow older the mind doesn't either ? The mother is just the mother, loving and caring and protecting her family when she should. The man that hunts the Tucks is a Tuck himself. He's Miles his grandson but all he's interested in is making money of the spring. No-one else seems to care that he's family as well. Winnifred's character is the worst of all. She's a 10 year old trapped in a young woman's body. The other characters I won't even mention because they are even flatter than the above mentioned main characters from this weak screenplay. It's a very bad adaptation of Natalie Babbit's wonderful novel. In the book our naive Winnifred really is 10 years old. That's why she and Jesse only kiss. JEFFREY LIEBER, the one who is RESPONSIBLE for this bad screenplay, just was to lazy or lacks the talent to let the actions of Winnifred fit the age he has given her or was ordered by the studio to give her. This explains why the young woman in this film takes the challenge of playing some stickball in the beginning of the movie and why at the end of the movie she runs back to daddy instead of following her first true love. All and all the cinematography, the acting and the ending make up for the very very very bad screenplay, but not enough to change my mind about this film. It's just more infantile Hollywood-pulp that murdered a wonderful story. The 1980 British adaptation of this children's novel was a better one......