The Mighty (1998) 8/10
Max Kane (Elden Hensen) is in the seventh grade and “looks like Godzilla.” He is silent, fearful, and enormous. Then “Freak” (Kieran Culkin) moves in next door. Freak has a rare bone disorder, walks using crutches, and has a hunchback. He is also extremely bright and well-read. The two form a friendship that carries them through the threat of street gangs, Freak’s illness, and Max’s haunted past.
My friend sent me a note on Netflix saying I simply must watch this movie with my son. And so I put it on the top of my queue and it came and we kept not watching it. Travel, his home tutoring, everything ate up our movie-watching time. So finally I called Netflix and asked them if they had a way of suspending the account for the summer. Turns out they do, even though it’s nowhere on the website. So the woman said “You have The Mighty at home.” And I said “Oh, I’ll return that.” And she said “Have you watched it?” And I said no and she said “Oh, you HAVE to! You should watch it with your son. It’s so wonderful. I think I’ll watch it tonight now that you’ve reminded me.” So I watched it.
The Mighty does lovely and moving things. It shows the drama in an ordinary life. Max’s life has, perhaps, not been ordinary at all. He’s famous in his neighborhood, although the reasons for that fame are revealed slowly. What we know is that his father is a convicted murderer, and he lives with his grandparents. But for Max it’s not really about murder and newspaper headlines, it’s more about fear, and hiding under the bed, and being afraid to be looked at, and living inside a placid shell that hides the turmoil.
Freak can’t live inside a shell, because his shell doesn’t work very well for him. But he can live inside a glorious imagination and an intelligence that fuels it. He explores the world, invents toys, and believes himself to be a Knight of the Round Table. With Max’s help, he can do heroic deeds and live up to a chivalrous code, a code that begins the work of healing Max’s self-image.
There’s a lot of clever editing in which knights in armor are interspersed with Freak and Max’s adventures; it’s not overdone, instead it’s touching and fun. Despite the fantasy imagery, the movie remains pretty grounded until the end. There’s a mid-point coincidence that is very “movie” and annoyed me a little, but only in the final fifteen minutes did I feel like my chain was being yanked, and then not hard.
The cast is overloaded. Gena Rolands, Harry Dean Stanton, and Sharon Stone have almost nothing to do; there’s a little more going on with Meat Loaf, Gillian Anderson, and James Gandolfini, but the real work is done by the two “boys” (both actors were actually adults, but that’s not really apparent).
Overall, I really do recommend this movie. It was charming and gritty in odd places. My only complaint is that it is “bookbound.” That’s probably not a word, but just as a stage-to-screen adaptation can feel “stagebound,” and not “opened up” for film, I feel that some novel-to-screen adaptations are trapped inside the confines of their source material. It felt very literal, very page-by-page. I don’t know if that’s true—I haven’t read the book—but the fact that it feels that way is enough.
By the way, Hollywood just sucks at titles. The source novel was called Freak the Mighty, which is a much better title; more distinctive, more memorable, more oddball. By contrast, “The Mighty” is an utterly forgettable title for a distinctive and oddball film.
