Forever Young ** (1992, Mel Gibson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Elijah Wood) – Classic Movie Review 9405

Director Steve Miner’s 1992 sci-fi romantic drama Forever Young stars Mel Gibson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Elijah Wood, and is written by Jeffrey Abrams, now better known as J J Abrams.

Gibson stars as test pilot Captain Daniel McCormick, who doesn’t ask his sweetheart Helen (Isabel Glasser) to marry him in 1939, and then she is killed in a car crash but is lying in a coma. He asks his scientist buddy Harry Finley (George Wendt), who is experimenting on cryogenics, to freeze him as a guinea pig in an experiment, and next he knows is he is being rudely awakened in 1992 by fatherless kid Nat Cooper (Wood), whose single mother mummy is nice nurse Claire Cooper (Curtis). But then Daniel’s body starts to age rapidly.

Mel Gibson and Jamie Lee Curtis do very well to keep this tosh going, but Gibson is finally defeated by the plunge into bathos when he suddenly becomes an octogenarian and gets the full Hollywood premature ageing kit daubed on his face. The film’s mix of fantasy, romance and sitcom is uneasy, the relationship between the boy and surrogate father Mel is awkward and even embarrassing, Wood is fairly irritating, and the wish fulfillment love affair is rather nauseating.

However, Curtis is excellent and unselfish in a largely thankless role and it is all smoothly handled by Steve Miner.

Also in the cast are Joe Morton, Nicolas Surovy, David Marshall Grant, Robert Hy Gorman, Millie Slavin, Michael A Goorjian, Veronica Lauren, Art LaFleur, Eric Pierpoint and Walton Goggins.

Forever Young is directed by Steve Miner, runs 102 minutes, is made by Warner Bros, Icon Entertainment International and Icon Productions, is released by Warner Bros (1992) (US) and Warner Bros (1993) (UK), is written by Jeffrey Abrams [J J Abrams], shot in Technicolor by Russell Boyd, produced by Edward S Feldman and Jeffrey Abrams [J J Abrams], scored by Jerry Goldsmith and designed by Gregg Fonseca.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9405

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com