Average Rating: 5.5/10
Reviews Counted: 98
Fresh: 38 | Rotten: 60
It means well, but The Odd Life of Timothy Green is ultimately too cloyingly sentimental -- and thinly scripted -- to satisfy all but the least demanding viewers.
Average Rating: 5.7/10
Critic Reviews: 27
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 16
It means well, but The Odd Life of Timothy Green is ultimately too cloyingly sentimental -- and thinly scripted -- to satisfy all but the least demanding viewers.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
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Director/writer Peter Hedges brings enchantment to the screen with The Odd Life of Timothy Green, an inspiring, magical story about a happily married couple, Cindy and Jim Green (Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton), who can't wait to start a family but can only dream about what their child would be like. When young Timothy (CJ Adams) shows up on their doorstep one stormy night, Cindy and Jim -- and their small town of Stanleyville -- learn that sometimes the unexpected can bring some of life's
Aug 15, 2012 Wide
Dec 4, 2012
$51.5M
Walt Disney Pictures
All Critics (98) | Top Critics (27) | Fresh (38) | Rotten (60) | DVD (1)
The film is schmaltzy and very saccharine, so sweet it'll give you a toothache.
It's hard to believe that Hedges once wrote some decent light fiction (What's Eating Gilbert Grape, An Ocean in Iowa) before he started making greeting-card movies like Dan in Real Life and this one.
"There comes a point where "Odd Life of Timothy Green" is just too sentimental and too odd."
A fable about parenting and its accompanying joys and sorrows, done in the trademark Walt Disney style of pleasant, feel-good entertainment that doesn't leave much of an emotional trace.
Mostly, The Odd Life of Timothy Green feels contrived , if undeniably sweet.
[It] feels like a retreat - into manufactured drama shellacked with sticky sentimentality, into risk-free storytelling full of coldly contrived conflict.
Disney-schmaltz, family-values hokum, and dopey clich�s ('anything's possible,' 'different's OK,' etc.), syrup over the intriguing allegory. If only the movie had plunged deeper into its well of meaning and stopped jerking at our heartstrings.
Sappy family drama never overcomes its peculiar fantasy premise.
A love letter to helicopter parents this is a ridiculous, if well-meaning, film that needs a good pruning.
A fable beyond belief
What the movie needs is an element of fun -- or at least childlike wonder -- to balance out the foreboding gloom that hangs over every interaction.
If it's not quite as deep as it would like, Timothy Green does what it sets out to do better than most.
... rather solemn whimsy, but hard to dislike ...
"The Odd Life of Timothy Green" is not your garden-variety feel-good kids' film, but it's a quirky, tender and mature ode to parenting that is equally entertaining for adults and children.
Positive stories like this one are much needed in these hard economic times, just as they were needed in the Great Depression during the 1930s.
Refreshingly well written and acted for what it is.
[It] gets a tad bittersweet in its finale, but it's Disney schmaltz of the highest order. By the end, the movie grows on you.
... sees its fleeting charms cancelled out by too many aggressive tugs at the heartstrings.
If there were an Academy Award for the film that gave the greatest effort to simply like it, The Odd Life of Timothy Green would be unbeatable.
The movie has some truly lovely moments, achieved through total open-heartedness, and then some awfully awkward ones, arrived at through the same means.
While definitely odd, I'm surprised about the lack of magic, heart-warming feelings in this film.
A family film that has the Disney magic - just not enough of it.
A story for childless adults made and marketed for the children those adults don't even have yet.
With such a premise, it should induce heartfelt emotional reactions, maybe even tears. It didn't for me.
When you hear the late-night thunder and see the ragged hole in the ground from which the boy has emerged, you may wish this 'Odd Life' had been conceived by Stephen King rather than Ahmet Zappa.
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