Northern Lights

This movie was slightly obscure. I had to do a little searching to find it. Northern Lights premiered on the Disney Channel in 1997 and is actually based on a one-man play about an eccentric small town. And not based on Nora Roberts' novel about sex in Alaska. Or Phillip Pullman's novel about polar bears and zombie children and awesomeness.

Plot: The story revolves around a tightly wound New Yorker (Diane Keaton) who arrives in a small town where her estranged brother (Tom Cavanagh) lived to attend his funeral after a freak accident. The town and the people are all slightly kooky. After the ceremony, she learns that her brother not only has a son, but that she has been left with the responsibility of caring for the child. She doesn't want to care for this child. And then SPOILERS she changes her mind and does. Twist!

My thoughts: I liked this movie much more the second time. The first time I watched it, I kept waiting for something to happen. The whole feel of the movie gave me the sensation that something magical was going to happen. As if the movie was building to a revelation about the mystical nature of the town and its inhabitants. That never happened, and then the movie was suddenly over. Watching it again, already knowing that there was basically no plot, it became a character study. How these characters interacted with each other. How the people of the town affected the outsiders, as well as the relationship between Diane Keaton and her nephew.

Knowing the source material definitely made it clear that this was meant to be about people, not plot. So if you decide to watch, I have to warn you that the story may feel clunky and kind of thrown together, and the side plots are even less cohesive: the stuff about the northern lights, and the bellhop who looks like a rat (yup, that's a thing) --feel half-baked. Cause they are. Just watch the acting.

The acting is very good. Diane Keaton is great (as always). Tom Cavanaugh plays her brother in a couple of flashbacks, and is perfect for the role. The kid is very, very good and the scenes with him and Keaton are wonderful. The town is this odd mixture of Pleasantville and Twin Peaks. At times it works well, other times it just seems quirky for sake of being quirky (which I sometimes find irksome). The townsfolk are intriguing, but never really fleshed out, so they just remain intriguing.

This doesn't feel like a Disney Channel original movie at all. It is certainly a movie that Disney would make, but it doesn't seem to have that Disney brand over everything. It's not full of Disney Channel actors, it takes it's time, it's pretty much a drama. It's almost as if the production team got this idea, and made this little movie, but then Disney had no idea how to market it, so they just put it away on TV. And I'm glad they did, because then it feels like this little strange gem that got hidden away on basic cable. It is quaint, and it is intriguing, and it's just delightfully atypical. So if you're curious, feel free to check it out. And tell me what you think!