The Odd Life of Timothy Green is one of the first movies I’ve seen completely destroyed by its execution and script. It wastes a terrific hook, good actors, a solid ending, and a quality theme. I was so in on this film I was telling people about it before it came out. Suffice to say it came back to bite me.
Cindy (Jennifer Garner) and Jim (Joel Edgerton) Green are waiting at the adoption agency to plead their case to the board. In the “Reasons Why They Are Ready” section they write 1 word: “Timothy.” They use the rest of their allotted time to tell their amazing story. After finding out they cannot conceive a child, they cope one night by writing out the characteristics of their ideal child. They bury the box in their garden in the back, and after a magical rain, a child, Timothy (CJ Adams), appears at their front door with leaves attached to his legs. The couple quickly realize their dream has come true, and vow to not to share the characteristics of other parents they are not as fond of, such as Jim’s absentee dad (David Morse) or Cindy’s haughty sister Brenda (Rosemarie DeWitt). Complicating matters are Cindy’s cold shoulder of a boss (Dianne Wiest) and Jim’s pencil factory possibly shutting down. Jim and Cindy have to learn how to handle the problems of a child in addition to their adult ones.
Timothy Green’s middle name must be Macguffin, because with one exception, his character is only viewed as a plot device. CJ Adams looks cute and friendly as Green, but he doesn’t fully become a character himself, leaving the audience surprisingly indifferent to the story. Timothy does have a cute relationship with a girl at the school, but otherwise, he is present to get a reaction from other members of the cast.
The rest of the cast is populated by good to great character actors, of which most are wasted by being painted in the broadest strokes possible. Joel Edgerton is pretty good in a poorly written role; he and Garner have a nice chemistry when they’re trying to be funny, but lack the emotional punch is obvious right away. Garner’s Cindy is too shrill to make you care about her fate. M. Emmet Walsh gets some very nice moments as an elderly uncle, but Rosemarie DeWitt, David Morse, Ron Livingston, and especially Dianne Wiest should be embarrassed for accepting the script as is.
These flaws can usually be ok in a sweet Disney movie, but the climax is where all of these flaws get horribly exposed. The reasons for Timothy’s fate are way too arbitrary for us to care about him, and several of the character’s accept someone’s word when they were just lied to. If the story focused more on the complicated ways to parent to children and the mixed/contradictory advice you have to give them plus the inevitable mistakes parents make, Timothy’s odd life might be more ubiquitous and emotional, but the characters are too broadly written to generate these situations, as if the writers were afraid kids would not get it.
Timothy Green tries to be as sweet as a Valentine candy, but like candies, the movie lingers and picks at you and eventually generates a cavity: a cavity of emotion, plot, and fully fleshed characters. Thus, the sweet ending ends up lacking the payoff without the toothbrush of a well executed script. After all of the thought put into the hook and ending, this oversight by Disney is like Timothy Green: just odd.