Waiting for Forever Movie Pictures

Movies | Undying Love in the Time of Arrested Development

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/movies/04wait.html

Movie Review | 'Waiting for Forever'

Undying Love in the Time of Arrested Development

Credit... Freestyle Releasing

Waiting for Forever

Directed by James Keach

Comedy, Drama, Romance

PG-13

1h 35m

• Feb. 3, 2011

Is he a holy naïf radiating good vibes or a delusional psychotic in dire need of treatment? Will Donner (Tom Sturridge), the homeless street performer who lopes through James Keach's terminally warm and fuzzy "Waiting for Forever," may be either or both. For Mr. Keach, who directed this latter-day hippie fairy tale from a screenplay by Steve Adams, Will's clinging to a dream of endless childhood is a sign of otherworldly purity; he is not crazy, just too good to live comfortably in the grubby, grown-up world.

Audiences are more likely to view the story of Will's starry-eyed, obsession-driven return to his Pennsylvania hometown as a case study of undiagnosed mental illness. Wearing plaid pajamas, a Chaplin bowler hat and a vest, Will has been hitchhiking around the country, clowning and juggling for spare change while tracking the peripatetic movements of his childhood best friend, Emma Twist (Rachel Bilson). Somehow — it is never explained — he has been able to remain apprised of her comings and goings without sending up any red flags. Some might call it stalking.

Since the death of his parents when he was 9, Will has existed in a state of arrested development that a more hardheaded film might identify as extreme post-traumatic stress. Before Will was sent away to live with relatives, Emma vowed that she would always be there for him. Although Emma and Will haven't seen each other or communicated for 16 years, her words have stuck in his mind like a broken record as a promise of the happily ever after once they reunite. A homoerotic version of a similar obsession drove the infinitely more sensitive and insightful Miguel Arteta film "Chuck and Buck."

Emma, a sullen television actress with a recently canceled series and a bullying, pathologically jealous boyfriend (Matthew Davis), has returned to Pennsylvania from Los Angeles because her father, Richard (Richard Jenkins), is terminally ill. The screenplay treats his imminent death as a screwball Punch and Judy show in which Richard's sarcastic gallows humor goes over the head of his frantically dithery wife, Miranda (Blythe Danner).

Will and Emma finally converge at the worst possible moment. Later, when he drags her to the playground where they frolicked as children, a scene intended to conjure the magic of reconnection to childhood innocence makes you squirm.

While watching "Waiting for Forever," I felt tentative stirrings of admiration for an indie movie that so aggressively flouts the hard-shelled conventions of romantic comedy. But more often than not, I felt suffocated by the gaseous sentimentality and lightheadedness of a story that drops in subplots that it can't begin to develop. Will's arrest for an accidental homicide involving Emma's rival boyfriends is the most egregiously perfunctory.

If the terrain of "Waiting for Forever" resembles the everyday world, the movie's spiritual locale is the faraway realm of Twee. Located in the same galaxy as Oz, it is a hazy dot in the great unknown of Never-Never Land.

"Waiting for Forever" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some strong language and mild violence.

WAITING FOR FOREVER

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Directed by James Keach; written by Steve Adams; director of photography, Matthew Irving; music by Damian Katkhuda and Nick Urata; produced by Mr. Keach and Trevor Albert; released by Freestyle Releasing. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes.

WITH: Tom Sturridge (Will), Rachel Bilson (Emma), Blythe Danner (Miranda), Richard Jenkins (Richard), Scott Mechlowicz (Jim), Nikki Blonsky (Dolores), Matthew Davis (Aaron) and Jaime King (Susan).

Waiting for Forever Movie Pictures

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/movies/04wait.html

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