Brilliant and touching

Better Late Then Never

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Blistering performances.

At the beginning, Mr. Rice is giving Owen a decoder ring, but in the next scene Owen is throwing the ring away. Mr. Rice has died, and Owen's parents won't even let him go to the funeral. Owen sneaks in anyway and tapes part of the funeral from the balcony. Later in the treehouse, he wants to show his friends Gilbert, Veg and Funnel Head the tape, but there's a problem. So they don't believe he was there, and he doesn't get 'points' (the boys get points for each courageous or stupid deed).Veg's father is the real estate agent handling the sale of Mr. Rice's house, which makes it easy for the boys to sneak in. There, they find clues to Mr. Rice's secret.Simon is a potential friend for Owen, for reasons I won't mention. But because he has leukemia and has lost his hair, other boys make fun of him. For that reason and for reasons that would be spoilers, Owen refuses to be Simon's friend.In some ways this resembled 'Stand by Me', though it's not nearly that good. And I didn't like that movie that much. It was occasionally creepy, with eerie music. One occasion that required this music was the presence of the local undertaker and his 1960 Cadillac hearse (technology and music made it clear this was the present, so I don't know why the hearse was so old, but who cares? It looked great). Owen showed a lot of intelligence in solving the mystery, and Bill Switzer and Zack Lipovsky were good together in their scenes. The solution to the mystery made an interesting and inspiring story.David Bowie was good as the middle-aged Mr. Rice, not showing any signs of being a wild rock star, though he was only seen in flashbacks sharing his wisdom with Owen. Funnel Head's brother Percy more closely resembled Bowie in his younger days; he was quite a colorful character whose help was needed in solving the mystery.This was a family movie, with a minimum of offensive content (there may have been bad language removed for TV). The worst thing was probably the bullies beating up on those they didn't like.This wasn't bad.

I rented it for Bowie. He had about 5 minutes of screen time, tops. It was like an after school tv special with cussing, vomit, boogers, grave digging, and violence against children with cancer thrown in for added viewing pleasure.One moment you're looking at cute middle class kids playing street hockey and the next scene, you're watching them kick a chemotherapy patient repeatedly in the kidneys.Perhaps I missed the point.

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** This is one of the worst films ever. The dialogue, acting, and direction are all appalling, but the real problems lie in the story and logic. First of all, no kid in the world would beat up a friend because they had cancer, or shout "Hey Cancer!" at them. Not unless the attackers were seriously disturbed, although after living through the event in this film they probably would be. Think about it. Why would Bowie's character live in a small canadian suburb if he really was a super being? Why would the boy develop a suspiciously close and secretive relationship with a strange reclusive man? Why would bowie's supply of magic potion ("I cannot tell you where or how I got this" why? because the writers couldn't be bothered to think it out) suddenly begin to run out at the moment the boy turns up? What boy in their right mind would secretly film the funeral, and then actually dig up the grave of a weird stranger purely on a hint of a hunch. And what kind of kids would be so easily and casually persuaded to go along with grave digging and corpse tampering? The "clues" which lead to the by discovering the potion are oblique and ambiguous to say the least. And the whole treasure hunt which involves gravedigging, breaking and entering and a whole load of other stuff leads the boys to the house where they started! With no appreciable purpose for the whole thing! Why didn't Mr rice just POST them the letter? And what the hell was with the Undertaker? He really DID want the boy to die so he could get his body?!? Why?? It doesn't make sense. I feel dizzy now thinking about it. Why David, Why? Watch this film, if only because you have to see it to belive that this is a mainstream kids film.

What better friend can a dying boy have than a mysterious neighbor who gives him a really cool ring, which he throws away at the first opportunity?This movie had great potential. David Bowie exists only in flashback as an avuncular sage who spouts chestnuts about living and dying, and for all that I wish that his screen time had been longer. Certainly his is the most interesting character in this collection of cliches, and the casting was well done in his case.My main problem with this movie is that it could have been a fantastic story, except it pulls out every cheap sentimental stop along the way. The story could have been told in many ways other than this one, with its collection of children that are either dying or obnoxious or both, but I suppose that it's just not as interesting or story-worthy when an adult is terminally ill. Why couldn't any other member of the community that supposedly loved and mourned Mr. Rice have been the recipient of his secret? The treasure hunt itself is a good device, and one of the best parts of the movie, as are Owen's troubling nightmares and images of death. I would like to have seen more of this. I would like to have learned more about Mr. Rice's life...and death. Instead, we're left with frustrating glimpses of an interesting character, and no real clue why he chose this boy as his best friend. This is a movie that tries too hard to be too many things (in some places too strongly reminiscent of "Stand By Me"), and in the end really leads the viewer nowhere we haven't been before.