King of the Hill (1993)

Too much of everything

A lot of fun.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Simple review.When Olympic judges rate a performance, they look for flaws and deduct accordingly.When beauty contest judges look at a pretty girl, they do not look at what works, they look at what doesn't.Same with film reviews.I watched mesmerized. One of the most perfect films I have ever seen. Perfect casting, action, direction, writing, pacing, music.Possibly one of the most perfect films ever.And, most astonishing of all, not well known even to film buffs.

In the 1933 Depression, Aaron (an impossibly young Jesse Bradford) is left all alone after his brother is sent away, his mother put in a sanitarium and his father has to leave to work for money. We see what the Depression was REALLY like through young Aaron's eyes. Too often the 1930s are romanticized...but not here! It is grim and powerful but there's also some very funny moments and a GREAT happy ending that was (more or less) believable. I read and studied the Depression in school and this movie got everything right--especially about the hell people went through. Also it looks fantastic! They got the cars, clothes, houses and everything right on target. This movie also has an incredible cast. Jeroen Krabbe (faking an American accent pretty well), Lisa Eichorn, Spaulding Grey, Karen Allen and Elizabeth McGovern all have small roles but are great in them, but it's Bradford who holds the film together. He was only 14 when he did this and he's GREAT! He anchors the film and is believable every step of the way. Also look for an unknown Katherine Heigl and future Oscar winner Adien Brody in small roles. This was a hard movie to market and the studio didn't even try. It died pretty quickly. I only caught it by accident on cable and was blown away by how good it is. This is an excellent film and easily one of the best film of the 1990s. A definite must see!

Whenever I watch this film, I find myself days later still being haunted by certain scenes. I can't believe that I had never even heard of this movie until I accidentally recorded it off HBO when trying to record the TV show of the same name. I love the unhurried pace of the film; I love how much is conveyed in people's faces. When the father returns home and Aaron is clearly angry with him, the father acknowledges and apologizes, and Aaron forgives, without a word being spoken. Absolutely brilliant.The scenes that haunt me are those of Aaron being so hungry. I've never been hungry in my life, but the image of him eating yet another dinner roll nearly brings me to tears.The last thing I'll add is that it's so refreshing to see a film set in an American city other than New York. Nothing against the Big Apple, but it's nice to have a different backdrop.

I can recall first seeing "King of the Hill" shorty after its initial release when I wasn't much older than the main character, Aaron (Jesse Bradford, who displays the natural swagger of a young George Clooney here). I was totally enthralled by the story, and this was one of the pieces that ushered in my complete love for and eerie obsession with Depression Era America.Steven Soderbergh as a director over the years has been wildly all over the map traversing genres and styles from top-notch cracker-jack indie flicks (the superb "Limey") to vapid star-studded populist entertainment (the "Oceans" series) to entertaining star vehicles (the excellent "Erin Brockovich") to overblown misguided message movies ("Traffic") to Kubrickian quandaries (the unfairly maligned "Solaris"). In 1993, still in his formative early years, he hit all the right notes with his vividly detailed and heartbreaking tale of a young boy (Bradford) abandoned in a sleazy hotel room on the edge of a Hooverville in 1933 St. Louise by his flaky salesman father, consumption riddled mother, and little brother who got shipped off to live with relatives so he wouldn't starve to death. The boy lies, steals, woos girls and wins academic awards at school propelled only by his keen wit and innate will to survive. Soderbergh brilliantly abandons almost all sentimentality (the exchanges between the brothers are heartfelt but raw, between mother and son tragically subdued, and between father and son frightfully cold yet honest) and views not the actions of the characters through the lens of our modern moral codes, but through the lens of the era in which the characters survived.Special note has to be given to the cinematography, which in lesser period pieces can so easily succumb to stylish excess. The film looks real and puts you right there in the middle of this American quagmire. There's also one amazingly rendered shot of a traffic cop holding up a squealing street urchin by the ear after capturing the boy stealing an apple that is so painstakingly lighted and framed that it serves as the complete flip-side of your classic Norman Rockwell painting from the same era.Viewing this film recently on cable, I was even more transfixed than the first time over thirteen years ago. There's also delight to be found in seeing Oscar winner Adrien Brody in his first major role as Aaron's "big brother" role model, and Grammy winner Lauryn Hill in a nice bit part as a sympathetic gum-chewing elevator operator.Although historically little seen, this film has been universally lauded, and as the early masterwork of an Oscar winning director, it's a crime that there has been no DVD release.