One wonderful KID

The Kid, quite surprisingly, is one of the freshest, most well-written movies of the year. It also happens to be a "family film," which is the angle that the hopeless TV ads for this movie have been emphasizing. But it's neither condescending nor predictable, and Bruce Willis has as good of a rapport with Spencer Breslin here as he had with Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense last year. And since the kids are crucial to the plot in both movies, that's all to the good.

Willis plays Russell, a cold-hearted image consultant who alienates everyone whose tattered image he isn't busy rebuilding. He's on the verge of his fortieth birthday when he's visited by Rusty (Breslin), whom he considers a very nasty kid. And well he should, because Rusty is Russell as he was 32 years before.

It takes nearly as long for Russell to accept this premise as it does for us. The movie's virtue is that it doesn't push for its effects. It takes its time establishing Russell's character, so that by the time he meets his miniature double, we can believe that this little kid really is him. It doesn't hurt that the moviemakers found a real prize in Spencer Breslin, who seems like a real kid. He is a kid, of course, and yet in movie terms, he's "real"--he's not Hollywood-handsome, yet he's far more believable than the usual flashy movie kid. And because of this, the great leap of faith required by the story occurs seamlessly.

Best of all, the movie doesn't shy away from its implications. The movie's point is that Russell has issues from his past that he has to deal with. And refreshingly, the movie deals with those issues--not any more graphically than a PG rating will allow, but there's no feel-good cop-out, either. And when the movie played it straight with the audience, I had even more respect for it afterwards.

It doesn't hurt that all of the actors play it straight as well. The best example is Jean Smart as a talkative passenger sitting next to Russell on a plane. At first her role seems cliched, yet the screenplay smartly and credibly extends her role to a later scene in the movie, and when Smart walks off the screen at the end of her second scene, she seems as satisfied as the audience is.

As for the main stars, the timing between Willis and Breslin is mesmeric. For this premise to work at all, there must be a plausibility factor, and here it's off the charts. After years of smugness, Willis seems to have found his human center with little kids. And in his own way, Breslin is just as smart an actor as Osment was. Here's to more believable kids in Hollywood movies!

The Kid is rated PG for extremely minor bathroom humor.