Whatever the characteristics of the Stephen King story on which it is based, this movie emerges as an unusual, sensitive, character-driven tale about young Bobby Garfield (Anton Yelchin) graduating from childhood innocence and ignorance to adolescent culpability and awareness, in 1960s smalltown America, under the tutelage of mystery-man and father-figure Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins). Though, superficially, some of the occult aspects of the original have been retained, the film sits firmly in the realm of realism - Brautigan's "extra-sensory powers" can be explained by his having exceptional faculties of intuition and character-judgement, implicit in the quiet authority that Hopkins brings to the role.
One of the film's quirkier aspects is that it initially teases us about its focus. Its starting point is when middle-aged Bobby (David Morse) learns about the death of a childhood friend Sully (Will Rothhaar); but this particular friendship figures little, and far more attention is paid to Bobby's calf-love for Carol (Mika Boorem). A little more on the relationship of Bobby and Sully would have been welcome; though the latter does figure in a poignant short sequence, when he is leaving for a holiday with his parents, which embodies what is missing from Bobby's dysfunctional relationship with his harrassed and erratic mother (Hope Davis).
One of the dangers of films dealing with teenage "rites of passage" set in previous times, is that they can be overly nostalgic, confusing subjective fond memories of childhood with objective assessments of the particular era. I don't think this happens here - the paranoid cold-war atmosphere and various social downsides shown in the movie act as an antidote to middle-aged Bobby's natural regret for the loss of his friends and of his own youth.
One of the film's quirkier aspects is that it initially teases us about its focus. Its starting point is when middle-aged Bobby (David Morse) learns about the death of a childhood friend Sully (Will Rothhaar); but this particular friendship figures little, and far more attention is paid to Bobby's calf-love for Carol (Mika Boorem). A little more on the relationship of Bobby and Sully would have been welcome; though the latter does figure in a poignant short sequence, when he is leaving for a holiday with his parents, which embodies what is missing from Bobby's dysfunctional relationship with his harrassed and erratic mother (Hope Davis).
One of the dangers of films dealing with teenage "rites of passage" set in previous times, is that they can be overly nostalgic, confusing subjective fond memories of childhood with objective assessments of the particular era. I don't think this happens here - the paranoid cold-war atmosphere and various social downsides shown in the movie act as an antidote to middle-aged Bobby's natural regret for the loss of his friends and of his own youth.