MOVIE REVIEW Noted director's 'I Am David' just can't make up its mind

The movie about a boy's escape from a prison camp never quite holds on to momentum.
By ROBERT DENERSTEIN
SCRIPPS HOWARD
It's not lack of a strong story that keeps "I Am David" from taking off. Blame a straightforward approach that makes the movie feel too much like an after-school special.
The plot -- a boy escapes from a Bulgarian prison camp in the 1950s -- suggests more adventure and hardship than the movie delivers.
Adapting Anne Holme's 1963 novel "North to Freedom," director Paul Feig serves up a film that doesn't quite match its subject.
It's almost as if Feig, who created TV's much-admired "Freaks and Geeks," feared giving the movie too much edge. Too often it has a predigested quality.
Although the movie's politics are muted, it's clear that David's incarceration has something to do with the fact that his parents were dissenters. In the camp, David has a mentor, portrayed in a brief appearance by James Caviezel ("The Passion of the Christ"), who once again is called on to be an exemplar of sacrifice.
Too bad these scenes are rendered in flashbacks, a technique that can disrupt the flow.
"I Am David" opens strongly, with scenes in the camp setting a somber tone, but once David (Paul Tibber) takes flight, the movie tends to become a boy's adventure, introducing him to a kindly Italian family and finally putting him in contact with a generous woman (Joan Plowright) who teaches him to trust again and helps him cross the border to Switzerland.
Good intentions
By its very nature -- David is told to head for Denmark -- the story has some forward motion, and Tibber is a decent enough actor. But some of the performances in the Italian scenes are wooden, and the movie often seems stuck in limbo -- neither a coming-of-age fable nor a harshly realistic view of a boy on his own.
Plowright, usually wonderful, provides the expected beneficence, but scenes in which she and the boy establish their relationship tend to drag, showing how much the journey contributes to the movie's sense of drama.
Young David doesn't know why he's been instructed to head for Denmark, which also adds a bit of mystery. An end-of-picture twist and a finale calibrated for emotion enhance the proceedings.
"I Am David" isn't the kind of movie that gives offense, but for me, its good intentions exceeded its dramatic power.