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

September 24, 2019 3:45 PM

From the director of Amélie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the title character is a 10-year-old boy from Montana whose mother (Helena Bonham-Carter) is fascinated with insects and whose father (Callum Keith Rennie) is a cowboy. T.S. Spivet's experiments with trying to invent a perpetual motion machine result in a call from the Smithsonian Institute.

Eventually, T.S. runs away from home and, through a combination of hopping a train and hitch-hiking with a semi-truck driver, gets to the Smithsonian.

posted by larrybob (3 comments total)

The film has its dark parts - early on, T.S.'s twin brother dies after an (off-screen) gun accident for which T.S. feels guilty. But it also has beautiful scenery, and bright colors and feels like a combination of Amélie, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, and a Wes Anderson movie.

There is no 3D release for North America, but the HK 3D Blu-Ray I bought has lots of great 3D moments.
posted by larrybob at 3:45 PM on September 24, 2019

I liked the book, but this description of the movie makes it sound like they made some big changes. T.S. isn't a mapmaker anymore??!! Have you read the book, and if so, what did you think of the film version?
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:51 PM on September 29, 2019

I don't recall much about map-making in the movie, but there were some examples of scientific illustrations he had done. I haven't read the book.
posted by larrybob at 2:30 PM on October 1, 2019