The Bumblebee Flies Anyway [PG-13] [2000]  
Overall movie:  ****
EJW content: Onscreen almost continuously; extremely restrained character, perhaps too much so for some viewers.

Although I'd been told this movie was good, I wasn't really looking forward to watching it. The synopsis sounded like a disease-of-the-week TV movie, and that's exactly what it seems like at first. Then it takes a 180-degree turn and the main character, played by Elijah, finds himself to be the center of a dilemma he didn't know existed at the beginning of the film. It becomes a lot more complicated and a lot less tidy than it seemed earlier and, in my opinion, that makes for a much better story.  (And I don't want to hear from anyone out there who had everything figured out right from the start!)

My full-time job involves writing about medical research, and I was a little distracted by moments of thinking, "It wouldn't really happen that way," but not enough to seriously impact my enjoyment of the movie--as long as I kept a certain level of suspension of disbelief.

I also found myself wondering if the climactic scene in this movie was a conscious reworking of the one in Radio Flyer, or just an amazing coincidence. Then I learned the book this movie is based on was published in 1983, so would have predated Radio Flyer. But, of course, all three versions of the scene (Bumblebee book, Radio Flyer, Bumblebee movie) are slightly different from each other, so if there was any copying going on, I'm not sure who got what from where!

I read the book after watching the movie, and was struck by the changes in attitude toward and medical care for terminally ill patients between the book's publication in 1983 and the movie's appearance in 1999. The movie is a quantum jump more positive than the book, and I believe at least some of this is legitimately based on these real-world improvements (and, yes, some of it on the filmmakers' decision to make major changes when adapting a book by an author known for his "dark" young adult novels). The differences are represented by the timing of the climactic scene: in the book it takes place between 11:00 p.m. and midnight, but in the movie it's just before dawn. Watch for a beautiful (and, I'm guessing, symbolic) shot of Eärendil/Venus as the morning star during this scene. Even though he has more options than the protagonist in the book, Elijah's movie character still has need of a light "...in dark places when all other lights have gone out."

There's realistic acting in this movie, including some portrayals that aren't necessarily meant to be enjoyable:  yes, research doctors can really be that impersonal and stiff, teenagers can really go through such annoyingly quick shifts between "come here" and "go away" attitudes, and even people who deal with dying patients every day really don't always know how to communicate with them.   Elijah's character is very restrained until that 180-degree turn (as he should be), but then goes through a wide range of emotions--and, as usual, Elijah shows his talent in that area. He even gets to fall in love in this one. Whether he "gets the girl" is somewhat open to interpretation but, well, I'll leave that up to you.

In my notes on Deep Impact, I mention one of his other gifts: the ability to pack meaning into one line. In The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, the audience's knowledge of the movie's outcome depends entirely on Elijah delivering his final line correctly--and he does. And many actors might have been satisfied with that. But "correct" doesn't begin to describe what Elijah communicates about his character here, with a simple grace that brought tears to my eyes. The line?  "Hello." That's acting.   

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These seem to be two different editions of the DVD, therefore listed by Amazon as two different items. Neither edition is available new at this time, but if there is a "best price" showing, there's at least one used copy of that DVD available.




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