Asking Bruce Willis to play a jerk is like encouraging Attila the Hun to run amok.

No problem. All they have to do is act naturally.

That's what Bruce Willis does in Disney's The Kid. He plays an obnoxious L.A. image consultant magically confronted by his eight-year-old self (Spencer Breslin) a few days before his 40th birthday.

They learn from each other, but they are so similar they get on each other's nerves; sort of like Abbott and Costello Jr., and nothing like Charlie Chaplin's The Kid circa 1921.

As premises go, consider The Kid 2000 a quasi-switching picture with heavy doses of life-lesson learning, reflecting an amalgamation of the latest in Hollywood's smarmy therapy trends.

Yes, The Kid is a comedy about searching for the inner child by regressive memory recollection. Colonics seem a more appropriate Hollywood tribute, but Steve Martin already covered that in L.A. Story.

The idea here, based on writer Audrey Wells' best intentions, is that Willis' media man goes on a therapeutic journey when he meets who he used to be. As he does take the sentimental journey, the older and the younger quip and crack wise. Meanwhile, the older dude shows his clients how to lie about themselves.

This would be irony in a more ambitious feature, but The Kid doesn't mine that sort of high-brow device. Instead, director Jon Turteltaub seems satisfied exploiting the soppy, sappy side. The architect of the charmingly vacant While You Were Sleeping does just that by wrapping The Kid dialogue around horrendously over-blown orchestrations and cutesy little sitcom set pieces.

Still, for all its pretensions and a tremendously tear-jerky climax, The Kid does have winning ways and some decent laughs. That's thanks mostly to, well, the kid, the cherub-like lisping Breslin who probably would've made a pretty good Bad News Bear.

Willis does what Willis does best. He does his smirking, snarky smart-ass as though he was born to be one. The other thing is that he connects with adolescents. Last summer it was with Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. This year it's Breslin's Kid.

Aiding the superficial comedy cause is Lily Tomlin doing her droll routine as the consultant's over-worked assistant. Jean Smart, playing a news anchor, provides a bit of spice to the occasionally bland proceedings.

Which is more than can be said for Emily Mortimer as the spunky but exaggerated girlfriend with a heart of mush. She's a bit too much at times, just like the film.

(This film is rated PG)

More Movie Reviews