A Review by Phil Calabro
2004, Lions Gate Films, Dir. Paul Feig - Starring Ben Tibber, Jim Caviezel, Joan Plowright, Hristo Shopov, Silvia DeSantis, Paco Reconti, Roberto Attias, Francesco De Vito, Viola Carinci, Marin Jivkov, Robert Syulev, Alessandro Sperduti
There is something about this movie that really gets to me. I think any hype for this (if you can say there was any at all) was focused on the fact that Jim Caviezel had a role in it. That's what attracted me to this movie, because I feel Caviezel is one of Hollywood's best method actors to date. But every backfires on your hope - I couldn't believe I wasted an hour and a half watching some untalented twerp meander around the boundaries of Europe. The movie is a complete miscalculation in epic narrative. Every encounter for David is the same - he tries to blend in with his surrounding, but everybody ends up rejecting him anyway and shooing him off to greener pastures. And even when people try and help him, he runs away, ruining any possibility of the movie ending sooner. Paul Feig, who wrote the equally bad television series 'Freaks and Geeks', has managed to take all the good attributes - wonderful cinematography, a potentially heartwarming story - and create a melancholy bore of a film. There's too much boring little kid who never smiles, and too little Caviezel.
David (Tibber) is a young Bulgarian child who has been incarcerated in a labor camp for most of his life. He can hardly remember if he has a mother or father, but he does have a close friendship with his guardian Johannes (Caviezel), who teaches him that life is really quite amazing past the prison gates. We see that a mysterious man - who is not revealed to the end of the movie - has given David all the necessities in order to escape the prison to Denmark. It is a long journey, but David is advised to trust no one. He wanders from the borders of Bulgaria to a ship set for Italy, in which a kind sailor Roberto (De Vito) gives him a lift to Milano, where he encounters a lovely Italian family which takes him in. Afraid that they may turn his back on him, he escapes and encounters an elderly painter named Sophie (Plowright), who teaches him the lessons of life, and even tries to help find him a home.
There's one thing about an epic narrative that's essential, and any sane being can tell you this - a likeable hero. David, our apparent 'hero', is possibly one of the worst child performances I have ever seen. An aluminum rod with googly eyes glued on could've been more emotional than this Ben Tibber fellow. With the exception of Dakota Fanning and Cameron Bright, Tibber's performance as David is the least interesting of them all. He never smiles, and even when people say that he is, it looks more like the face you make after you sneeze. Tibber never talks, and when he does, it's like Bambi incarnate. There aren't any points awarded for cuteness in my book. The only two other showcased actors are the film's saving graces - Jim Caviezel and Joan Plowright. Caviezel is only seen in flashbacks, which take up roughly 2% of the movie. His character is necessarily, because the philosophy lies within it. but Paul Feig is so absorbed in his Tibber kid's adventures, that no real acting talent is presented. Plowright is wonderful as the loverly Sophie, but a bit too stereotypical of the grandmother character. She feels more like a family member of David than a guardian, but it all works the same.
The movie gets as hackneyed as it can possibly be. Director Feig has flawed in many aspect, the most notable is the unlikeliness of the story. Somehow David, who is as quiet as can be, can speak over six different languages - despite being in a labor camp his entire life. Where are the books, the education? This little characteristic is unfashionable and impossible. Also, I find it kind of odd that everywhere David ends up, he's yelled at and bickered by people he doesn't even know. Isn't there some stranger out there that isn't out to harm or upset a poor little kid like David? And when David is offered help, he runs away like a little sissy. There's so much attention given to his little encounters with an Italian baker to a stupid American couple that character development is entirely out of the question. Did I neglect to mention the pitiful excuses of tugging at the audience's heartstrings? Irrating monologues and statements from our pathetic hero include a little prayer to St. Elizabeth, even though he has no clue what she symbolizes - and lines like "there's no happiness in the world" and "I can't be happy" and "I can't act". Ok, I fiddled around with the last line, but you catch my drift.
'I Am David' is as unoriginal, boring, repetitive, and horrible as it gets for independent films. I can't even understand how this has received praise from the film festivals, because there's such little genuinity in this flick. It's bound to keep people from paying attention or caring about the characters at the end, but we can only blame it through its anticlimatic methods. A bad movie indeed.
