Hearts in Atlantis

Released: 2001
Drama, Sci-fi
Director: Scott Hicks
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, David Morse, Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis
Running Time: 101 minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown: This is based on a book by Stephen King about a mysterious older gentleman who moves into a quiet neighborhood and changes the lives of three young children forever.

I really enjoyed the book so I had wanted to see this movie for a long time.
In the 1960's America that this story takes place a quiet neighborhood is a perfect place for our mysterious stranger to choose to live.
There's a house that Bobby and his mother live in with an upstairs apartment that's available for rent.
Ted Brautigan shows up one day as the newest resident, with a few suitcases and not much else and immediately makes friends with Bobby.  Bobby never knew his father, but only knows of him from his mother's stories.  About how he liked to gamble and when he died he had no life insurance policy and left them with a ton of bills.  Bobby is a mature young kid and enjoys finding out about Ted as much as his mother will let him.  Bobby's mother is selfish and neglects Bobby almost always for herself or her job.  Instead of buying Bobby a new bike for his birthday, she buys herself a dress.

Bobby also has a couple friends, Carol, a girl who he has a crush that lives down the street, and his other friend, Sully who is also close by.

Bobby divides his time up between his young friends and Ted.  Although Ted pays him $1.00 a week to look for strange things in the neighborhood like lost dog signs and to read him the paper because his eyesight is starting to fail him.  Bobby enjoys this time with Ted, but notices that his new friend tends to zone out sometimes and says strange things like he's in a trance.

Eventually Bobby notices some lost dog posters in the neighborhood and tells Ted.  Reluctantly he figures out that Ted is going to have to leave soon to avoid the Low Men.  A group of men Ted has told Bobby to keep an eye out for.  They will be hunting Ted down and want to take him away permanently.  The Low Men always look the same - they drive very nice older cars and dress in sharp suits and always wear fedoras.  Ted has the ability to read minds and the Low Men want him back from where Ted escaped.

I won't tell you anymore, except for the fact that the book is much better than the movie was.  Unfortunately, in the movie they dropped a lot of the supernatural plot lines and kept all the human drama stuff (which is good), but personally, what I thought made a great book is all but an afterthought in the movie.

I say read the book first then watch the movie.
I can easily say I was very impressed with the performance of the little boy - Anton Yelchin, who by now is a full grown man and doing lots of other movies, so he's got talent.  And Anthony Hopkins was very good as well.
I give it a 4 out of 5 for being a good movie alone, but could be improved with some supernatural magic elements from the book.