Hearts in Atlantis: Movie, DVD Review (2001)

Scott Hicks' "Hearts in Atlantis" is a nostalgic, pop-culture dream, a coming-of-age film whose memories of the past are wrapped in such humid, honey-dipped hues, the harsher realities of the world, for the most part, are kept carefully at bay.

Based on "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling," two stories from Stephen King's best-selling book, "Hearts in Atlantis," the film, set during the summer of 1960, is about small-town America and the end of childhood innocence.

It seems tailor-made for difficult times, a warm-and-fuzzy confection of pseudo-deep introspections, life-affirming moments and twinkling mysticism that only occasionally brings down the room with such downers as unhappiness, tragedy and despair.

That's a big departure from King's deeper, more introspective and interesting book, which spans 40 years and examines how Vietnam affected its characters' lives. But Hicks, working from a screenplay by William Goldman, nevertheless sustains interest, overcoming the film's forced supernatural elements and its undeveloped feel with likable characters and a handful of strong performances from an excellent cast.

Told in flashback, the film follows Bobby Garfield (Anton Yelchin), an 11-year-old boy whose life gets a lift when the mysterious sage, Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins), takes the apartment above Bobby's home.

For Bobby, the relationship is a blessing. With his father dead and his difficult, self-absorbed mother (Hope Davis) too busy hating the world to be emotionally available to her son, Bobby needs the older man's friendship and guidance, which he receives in the film's best, truest scenes.

But when the movie hits its midpoint and Ted starts to drift into a weird hypnotic daze, his eyes glossing over as he mumbles something about a group of "low men" out to get him for his psychic powers, the film skips a beat as Goldman's script sinks into a supernatural fog.

"Hearts in Atlantis" is being compared to other King adaptations, particularly "Stand By Me," "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile," but it doesn't have their scope or emotional range. Still, it does score when Hicks captures what King does so well, such as the magic of Bobby's relationship with his first love, Carol Gerber (Mika Boorem), and the vivid snapshots of childhood's bittersweet end.

Grade: B