Synopsis
Simon Birch and Joe Wenteworth are boys who have a reputation for being oddballs. Joe never knew his father, and his mother, Rebecca, is keeping her lips sealed no matter how much he protests. Simon, meanwhile, is an 11-year-old dwarf whose outsize personality belies his small stature. Indeed, he often assails the local reverend with thorny theological questions and joins Joe on his quest to find his biological father.
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Cast
- Ashley JuddRebecca Wenteworth
- Ian Michael SmithSimon Birch
- Joseph MazzelloJoe Wenteworth
- Oliver PlattBen Goodrich
- David StrathairnRev. Russell
- Dana IveyGrandmother Wenteworth
- Beatrice WindeHilde Grove
- Jan HooksMiss Leavey
- Cecilley CarrollMarjorie
- Jim CarreyAdult Joe Wenteworth
Recommendations
- 78
Austin Chronicle
Only masterful performances keep this frankly sentimental film from foundering in a sea of syrup. - 75
Christian Science Monitor
The movie is lively, funny, and endearing until melodramatics and sentimentality take over in the last few scenes. - 70
Chicago Reader
This friendly, briefly exciting story (1998), inspired by John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, achieves a nice balance between caricature and nuanced characterization and even manages not to be cloying. - 60
Dallas Observer
The film is a feeble shadow of a book that won over even those of us who are no special fans of Irving -- it's probably his funniest, least self-conscious work. - 60
TV Guide Magazine
Irving's dead-serious sense of spiritual purpose is here replaced with weepy sentiment and saccharine comedy. But knee-deep in syrup, the film manages to stand on its own -- mainly due to a terrific performance from young Smith and a host of winning supporting players. - 42
Entertainment Weekly
It allows for little of the dark and funny in Irving's picaresque morality fable. No room! Not with the buckets of bathos thrown our way, substituting for mass-market spiritual uplift! - 40
The New Yorker
This tale of faith, fate, death, and redemption is non-threatening and also non-inspiring. - 30
Los Angeles Times
Johnson, on his maiden voyage as director, treats every scene as if it were a bonbon, almost too precious to consume, and Marc Shaiman's score is a running series of mood cues.
