LEAVE IT TO BEAVER
SYNOPSIS:
The Cleavers are the family you always wished you had. Ward
(Christopher McDonald) is wise and wonderful, while June (Janine
Turner) is the beautiful, perfect wife and mother. Big brother
Wally (Erik von Detten) is good looking, smart, popular and
athletic. And Theodore - aka Beaver (Cameron Finley) - is just a
regular kid trying to stay out of trouble, while finding a
thousand ways to mess up. Beaver feels he is always disappointing
his Dad, and wants to be reassured that he is loved for who he
is. When Wally’s friend Eddie (Adam Zolotin) suggests that
‘sucking up’ is the way to get a new bike, things start
going wrong…
"In the 50s and 60s, television audiences seemed to
hanker for sitcoms centered around the perfect family - like The
Donna Read Show, My Three Sons and Leave It To Beaver. Perhaps at
that time, seeing the mother cum housewife strutting about the
spotless house complete with full make-up, hairdo, pearls and
stockings as she vacuums the house didn’t make women reach
for Valium or Prozac. It was an age when it was perhaps
reassuring to see the entire neighbourhood’s manicured
gardens and picture postcard houses. But in the 90s, are we still
willing to accept the mother/wife looking as though she has just
walked off a television commercial shoot, with heavy make-up and
every hair sprayed in place? This is the mum who never yells,
gets impatient or cross, but says inane phrases like
‘I’m a little worried about The Beaver’… Are
we wanting, willing or able to accept such a family, set at a
wishy-washy time somewhere between the 50s and 90s? And
that’s essentially the trouble with Leave It To Beaver. It
seems to want it all ways. Schmalzy and trite, it relies heavily
on the goodwill and nostalgia. Pity, because there are some
redeeming qualities to the film - namely a goodhearted charm,
some delightful performances, and a fabulous melodic score by
Randy Edelman which manages to include phrases from the original
TV theme. Cameron Finley, with his turned up nose, long-lashed
saucer eyes and freckly nose, is terribly cute as Beaver, while
Erik von Detten (Wally) and Erika Christensen (Karen) make an
appealing young teen couple. Christopher McDonald and Janine
Turner fit the mould, but their performances are locked into
stereotype and caricature. It’s hard to suspend disbelief
with a script that has a precocious kid (Zolotin) saying
‘Fate has dealt me a winning hand’ and 8 year old
Beaver sits sedately in a suit and tie at a family psychiatrist
visit. Leave It To Beaver has a certain innocence rare in
today’s film market, but whether or not this is what the
kids of today want for movie entertainment remains to be
seen."
Louise Keller
"This week sees two films based on tv shows: Lost in
Space and Leave it to Beaver. Despite their obvious differences,
both films have one thing in common: their reinforcement of
idyllic family values. But where Lost in Space was content to pay
a specific homage to those values and reinstating them for a
contemporary audience, the big-screen Beaver's problem is a lack
of relevance to the children of the baby boomer generation whose
families were gently satirised in post-war America. The dilemma
facing filmmakers in transposing this family to the big screen is
that in appealing to the age group that sat around the tv in the
late 50s enjoying the precocious Beaver getting himself out of
trouble, they are addressing an audience that would have no idea
who this character is. Now, as a simple family comedy, there's
nothing inherently wrong with this movie adaptation. It's cute,
somewhat amusing at times, and the young actor Cameron Finley is
engaging as Beaver. But it all seems somewhat pointless. The film
skips along through a series of uneventful plot divergences never
really creating a sense of reality. This may have worked nicely
had the film remained in the fifties, as in the case of the far
better Brady Bunch film, and allowed us to be reminded of a
quaint bygone era, rather than create a feeling of contemporary
normalcy. In making the film contemporary, it is actually trapped
in yesteryear, through the dismal characterisation of June
Cleaver, played by a miscast Janine Turner. This is the nineties
guys, and we still have women vacuuming the home with two kids at
school? Kids, if they have any idea what they're seeing, and if
they're not being swept away by Lost in Space, may find this film
appealing, and it does have a simplistic charm. The rest of us,
however, may take -or leave- the Beaver."
Paul Fischer
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CRITICAL COUNT
Positive: 0
Negative: 3
Mixed: 0
__________________
LEAVE IT TO BEAVER (G)
(US)
CAST: Christopher McDonald, Janine Turner, Cameron Finley,
Erik von Detten, Adam Zolotin, Barbara Billingsley, Ken Osmond,
Frank Bank, Erika Christensen, Alan Rachins, E.J. De La Pena,
Justin Restivo, Geoff Pierson, Grace Phillips
DIRECTOR: Robert Simonds
PRODUCER: Andy Cadiff
SCRIPT: Brian Levant, Lon Diamond, (based on the TV series
created by Bob Mosher, Joe Connelly)
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Thomas Del Ruth
EDITOR: Alan Heim
MUSIC: Randy Edelman
PRODUCTION DESIGN: Perry Andelin Blake
RUNNING TIME: 88 minutes
AUSTRALIAN DISTRIBUTOR: UIP
AUSTRALIAN RELEASE: April 9, 1998
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