(Rated PG, 90 mins.)
May Tuck (Sissy Spacek) sets out to meet her two sons as she has every ten years so that the Tuck family, headed by Mr. Tuck (William Hurt), can have a reunion. Not far away in another small town lives Winifred Foster (Alexis Bledel), an anxious-to-grow-up teen tired of corsets and piano lessons. She’s also tired of her domineering mother (Amy Irving.) When mom says she’s packing her up for boarding school, young “Winnie” flies the coop and lands in Tuck territory. The family must keep her hostage (in a kind way) for fear she’ll tell their big secret to the fountain of youth. “Time is like a wheel turning and turning” but for the Tucks, it’s everlasting. Unlike the rest of the world the Tucks do things the slow way and Winnie finds herself able to explore, play and fall in love with their younger son Jessee (Jonathan Jackson). This is all fine until a man roaming the woods in a strange canary colored suit (Ben Kingsley) threatens to reveal their youthful secret. The upside of this youthful, Disney style classic is that the supernatural is shown without special horror effects, axes, blood or gore. It’s more “Little House On The Prarie” with a spirit kind to the soul. Spacek is perfectly cast as the backwoods mom and Hurt as the dad. Dealing with dreamlike fantasies, the story is based on the award-winning book by Natalie Babbitt. Yet it seemed peculiar that the young Winnie never asks to return home despite being dragged by horseback to the Tuck’s residence. The romance is cute and charming and geared toward a crowd of young women devouring their first sickening-sweet Harlequin novels.
