The Odd Life of Timothy Green Blu-ray Review

The Odd Life of Timothy Green is probably one of the more unique movies to be released this year.  I knew this from the moment I first saw it that it was something special as I mentioned in my initial review of the movie at On the Go in MCO.  It’s a timeless, warm, caring movie that will walk you through a gamut of emotions that the whole family can appreciate.  If you’d like to learn more about the movie you can listen to Episode 86 of our podcast.  And since December 4, 2012 it’s been available on Blu-ray.

The first short on the Blu-ray is titled This is Family, and it’s a piece where we learn that to make the Greens a believable family, and the town of Stanleyville a believable corporate family.  Ahmet Zappa tells us about the movie he wanted, about a couple that can’t have children that suddenly get one.  We learn that Peter Hedges took the idea and ran with it and helped foster the family of the movie.  Actors talk about how they all loved making the movie and working together and working with Hedges.  The entire piece does a fantastic job of giving the sense of the special nature of this film.

This is followed up with The Gift of Music which is a discussion about the music in the movie.  We get a good look at how movie score composer Geoff Zanelli worked to create the main score of the movie as well as other character oriented works in the film.  Then Hedges tells us about the song “The Gift”by Glen Hansard, and how he worked with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus to create the song.  Hedges notes that Hansard just immediately understood the special nature of the story of the film and how to translate it into a song that captured that meaning.  A music video of “The Gift” can be found on the Blu-ray.

There are also a number of deleted scenes on the Blu-ray which seem to imply that the story as originally filmed was slightly different than the end result.  I really don’t want to give away the difference, but once you’ve seen the movie and then these deleted scenes you’ll likely spot the differences.  Overall I think it was smart to change the movie the way they did it makes the end more impactful and meaningful.

If you’re looking for a good family movie to add to your collection, you can’t go wrong with The Odd Life of Timothy Green.  It’s certainly not a movie for everyone, but it is a movie that I truly do enjoy and I’m glad to have added to my collection.