Heart and Souls

reviewed by Vivian Rose, age 14, from US

Heart and Souls is a dopey, unsurprising, but somewhat amusing movie.

It begins in the 1950's when several very different people board a bus. One is a man who seems to have a complex about singing in front of people; he has just come from his second failed audition for the chorus. Another passenger is a woman who has been avoiding the issue of deciding to marry her long- term boyfriend; she hopped the bus to go after him and tell him she definitely wants to get married. A switchboard operator and a criminal are also on board, along with the bus driver. The driver swerves to avoid hitting a car, only to go off a bridge. Everyone is killed.

Then they become something like guardian angels to a little boy born at the time of the accident. They levitate, materialize and disappear, and talk to the little boy. Only he can hear and see them, leading his parents and teachers to suspect he has psychological problems.

Really, you'd think the screenwriters could do better. Come on, ghosts only visible to one person? The old levitation trick? None of this is even done in an original manner. Although some parts of this film are funny, but I found it too silly and fanciful for my taste. If a movie is going to be unrealistic, it should at least be unrealistic in a creative way! For example, the 1996 occult thriller "The Craft" featured a levitation trick, but they did it in an inventive manner. Of course, I think witchcraft makes a much more engrossing movie topic than guardian angels, anyway.

My rating: 2 stars

Rating : PG

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