That's suggested, of course, but "Tuck Everlasting," by virtue of being a squeaky-clean tale for young adults, can't get anywhere near an even remotely believable truth about the nature of young love and lust. (In a wordless flashback sequence, we see her flashing her eyes angrily at this family of weirdos, and we don't for a minute blame her.) The youngest Tuck, Jesse (Jonathan Jackson), is 17 going on 104 and has never been laid, so you can imagine what goes on in his head when he lays eyes on the luscious Winnie. Miles (a glowering Scott Bairstow), the embittered older son, used to be married, but when his wife found out the family secret, she took the couple's two kids and hit the road. Mae (Sissy Spacek, who manages to hold onto some shred of dignity in a dismal role) and Angus head up this forlorn clan. "Tuck Everlasting" is set in 1914 the Tucks have been kicking around since early in the century before - they're lost people in some very old clothes. "Don't be afraid of death - be afraid of the unlived life" is the movie's message, delivered (more than once) at the expense of a coherent story with any real sense of drama.īut then, lessons are really all that matter in movies like this one. They're forever doomed to keep to themselves and watch wistfully as the world swirls by around them in its eternal spin-cycle of renewal.Īfter a pert 15-year-old rich-girl outsider named Winnie (Alexis Bledel) accidentally stumbles onto the Tucks' secret babbling brook, daddy Angus Tuck (William Hurt) explains ruefully, "What we Tucks are, you can't call it livin'." You can't call it actin' either, but that's not even the major problem with "Tuck Everlasting." Adapted by director Jay Russell ("My Dog Skip") from Natalie Babbitt's popular 1975 young-adult novel of the same name, the picture has trouble finding the right tone: It wobbles ineptly between enchantment, spookiness and gassy profundity. But there's something genuinely creepy, and not in the good way, about this story of a family whose members, having drunk from a magic forest spring, stay exactly the same for hundreds of years. "Tuck Everlasting" is a neo-vampire movie for tender-hearted preadolescent girls who are afraid of sex.
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