Forever Young

Starring: Mel Gibson

Directed by: David Drury

RS: Not Rated

1984 Romance

Add Mel Gibson to the growing list of actors (Robert Downey Jr. in Chaplin, Billy Crystal in Mr. Saturday Night) playing gray, wrinkled, liver-spotted codgers. It's Hollywood's most irritating new trend. But don't fret. Gibson flaunts his bare butt before burying his baby blues in moldy latex. It's depressing to watch this fine actor sell himself short in shameless weepies like this bottom feeder from writer Jeffrey Abrams, who should have been sentenced to TV after inflicting the appalling Regarding Henry on us.

Gibson plays Daniel, a 1939 test pilot who's just a moment shy of proposing to his girl (pretty Isabel Glasser) when an accident sends her into a coma. Too depressed to live, he volunteers for an experiment that will freeze him for a year. When he thaws out in 1992 (How? Don't ask!), Daniel has only a cute kid (Elijah Wood) and his single mom (Jamie Lee Curtis) to help him learn what happened before the aging process accelerates. Gibson's easy charm and Curtis's tart comic timing help until Abrams and director Steve Miner (Soul Man) set off an avalanche of sentiment mindful of other movies (Late for Dinner, Always) that nobody saw for good reason.

PETER TRAVERS
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