The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013)

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet... a great but extremely flawed film; from the moment this film started I was conflicted all the way through, T.S. Spivet is full of wonderful and great moments which are at times funny and very amusing... but it is also full of major flaws which challenges the viewing experience; I watched this movie on Netflix yesterday and overall I really enjoyed this movie despite it's major flaws, firstly the film's center theme is adventure... it focuses on a young boy named T.S. Spivet going to collect the Baird prize that he had won from creating a scientific invention known as the "perpetual motion machine" and T.S. Spivet has to overcome obstacles that challenge him like the fact that his parents are looking for him and hiding from security when he ends up in restricted areas like quarries and train yards; I like the fact that the obstacles that T.S. Spivet has to face up against is different compared to other adventure movies, normally the obstacles would consist of things like boulders chasing after the hero, traps placed around mysterious areas and creatures always chasing after you; this movie uses things that we see in modern day life as the obstacles for this young boy and it works extremely well in this movie, also this movie succeeds at doing it's job and that is it makes you go on this adventure with T.S. Spivet to collect the Baird award and it makes you feel like you're actually there with him... you feel like that you are going on this adventure with T.S. Spivet and I love that sense of immersion whilst I was watching this movie; also there are quite a few times in which I laughed as there were some scenes which were very comical and extremely funny... unfortunately though this doesn't occur often and I would have loved to have laughed a lot more but then yet again I laughed more times than I expected to and I have to give the movie props for that; but like I said at the same time I would have loved to have laughed more times because when the comical moments did occur they were extremely funny so it would have really added to the movie experience if we had more of those moments, at times though I felt it tried too hard to be funny because there were times in this movie in which the humor was awkward and tasteless; when those moments occurred you really felt that the movie needed to move on and get away from those scenes because to me it felt out of place and very gratuitous... you felt like that you wanted to slap the movie and tell it not to do that because it just felt so wrong and not needed; I'll give the filmmakers props for trying to pull that humor off but unfortunately I didn't work so don't do that ever again, as always Helena Bonham Carter is on the top of her game and she is undeniably the best thing in this entire movie; she is just a brilliant actress who knows how to act and she portrays her character brilliantly in this movie like she has done with all her other characters, however I must say that along with Helena Bonham Carter I feel that the other best thing in this movie is Kyle Catlett who plays as T.S. Spivet; I have to confess that no other actor could have played the role of T.S. Spivet as well as Kyle Catlett did, he is able to show emotion in T.S. Spivet's face and you root for him throughout the course of this entire movie because there are things that have happened to him throughout his lifetime which have really took a toll on him... but I won't say what happened; he is also able to show all kinds of different thoughts and feelings via his facial expressions and Kyle Catlett executes that perfectly, on the other hand though despite the fact T.S. Spivet shows a lot of emotions throughout the entire course of the movie I never really got emotional myself during those sequences... which is a shame because for an actor who is trying really hard to make us feel for him he unfortunately fails to do this, albeit they are really touching scenes but they don't necessarily tear you up and I would have liked it if this movie was able to do that; but sadly once again I have to confess that the film ultimately fails to do this and that is a problem, the film also goes into a lot of detail about things... it explains to you what is going on or what something is by using pictures and diagrams; I really like this but at times I still didn't manage to get a grip about what something is or what is exactly going on as the Scientology of some of the science stuff was way too confusing to get an idea of what it was or how it works... I mean on some of it you do get an idea of what the specific item is or what it does but the idea is to make sure that the audience understands every single piece of information if it's really confusing; explaining things to the audience also makes us go onto our next point and that is the movie is explaining everything to the audience... WHY IS THE MOVIE DOING THAT?!, what happened to the rule "show but don't tell" this movie completely brakes that rule as it explains everything to the audience... albeit it really helped me to understand things in this movie but it would have added replay value if the film didn't give away all the information on the first round; so it's time to take notes... do not give away important information to the audience by telling it to them (that's if the filmmakers are reading this review right now in which case they are probably not), I also felt that the film could have been slightly shorter and there were times when the movie dragged but otherwise The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet is a really enjoyable film which is full of major flaws but they don't ruin your viewing experience which is why I will still get this movie on DVD despite it's 3 star rating; it has really good obstacles that T.S. Spivet has to overcome, it has brilliant acting from both Helena Bonham Carter and Kyle Catlett, it has really funny moments despite the fact that there weren't a lot of them, I liked the way things were explained to you despite the fact that at times you didn't understand what was being told to you, and I loved the immersion that this movie gives to you during your experience of watching T.S. Spivet; however there were some moments of humor which were way too awkward, tasteless and out of place to be even described as funny, the movie would have had replay value if it didn't explain things to the audience, the emotional moments weren't really that emotional, I felt the movie was slightly too long and there were times when the movie dragged; I actually quite like this movie because of the fact it has conflicted me so much with it's content and I am actually really looking forward to watching this again in the near future, this movie is currently on Netflix and if you have Netflix please check this movie out because this is a really interesting piece of filmmaking; I will give The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet a 6 out of 10 with the "Re-watchable" title given from me.