This Boy's Life

This Boy's Life
by Michael Caton-Jones

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DVD details

Actor: Eliza Dushku, Ellen Barkin, Jonah Blechman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Brand: WARNER HOME VIDEO
Cinematographer: David Watkin
Producer: Art Linson
Producer: Fitch Cady
Producer: Jon Peters
Producer: Peter Guber
Writer: Robert Getchell
Writer: Tobias Wolff
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 115 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-05-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video

DVD Reviews of This Boy's Life

DVD Review: De Nerio Upstaged !!
Summary: 5 Stars

Dicaprio is short of geneious in his roll of Abused Son...De Nerio, one of my favorites ,is very good in his roll too, but is much upstaged by Dicaprio, who at a very young age, gave probably, besides Tiatnic, and Whats eating gilbert Grape, a very demanding and concvining performance ever. What was most amazing was how young Dicaprio appears at the beginging of the movie. I swear it looks like the Director filmed this movie with a Real couple of years in between, so we could watch Dicaprio gently age. De Nerio's role demands that he playes such a hatful bullying father that he fools you into actually totally disliking him, which I feel his role is meant to be portrayed, and portarayed well it is!...Barkin is also very good, playing the role of Abused Woman Syndrome. Dont know the actual term for that syndrome, but it is very real and a sad coment on our "societal Hush Hush". Barkin Glows when she gets that.."Hey were out of here" additude. As the story progresse, she comes accross more as a sister than a mother...But after the hardships she indures in her personal life,..she demands better for her son. Oh, and WOW, check out the pompador Hair due on Dicaprio. This movie based on actual events is very grippig and heart breaking, and very much so because it continues right now as you read this review...Highly Recemonded, wounderful movie.

DVD Review: Memorable, But Difficult To Watch
Summary: 4 Stars

This was a very haunting, sometimes very difficult story to watch unfold on screen. When it came out, I had never heard of Leonardo DiCaprio, but I wasn't alone as this was only his second or third time on screen. Anyway, he certainly gave a powerful performance and served notice he was going to be a "big name" actor.

Basically, it's about teenage kid and his mom trying to survive the mean father-husband of the family in a small town during the 1950s. Robert De Niro plays the dad and Ellen Barkin, the mom.

Leo plays "Tobias Wolffe;" De Niro, "Dwight Hansen" and Barkin, "Caroline Hansen." She had remarried Hansen after having "Toby" earlier, hence the surname "Wolffe."

What made this story tough for me was that, to be honest, neither father nor son were nice guys, although De Niro's character was far worse. The struggles - and that's putting it tactfully - between father and son were really nasty. Yet, as unpleasant at is, the story is memorable and it haunted me for several days, especially since it is "based" on a true story. How much of this was true, I can't say, but it is a dramatic story you will not dismiss.

DVD Review: Classic Leo DiCaprio
Summary: 5 Stars

Love any movie with Leo! He is just an awesome actor and this movie is the start of his unbelievable acting career!

DVD Review: This Boy's life
Summary: 4 Stars

This is a true story about Tobias Wolffe. He is a boy who's mother is raising him alone, and he spends most of his days with his buddies, and getting into trouble while she's at work. His mother doesn't know what else to do with him, so she marries a man, whom she feels would be a good example to him. This is when she decides to send poor Tobias to stay with her new boyfriend to see if he can straighten him out (prior to their marriage). He is very strict, and down right mean to Tobias, but is always nice his mother. Finally, when Tobias' mother gets married to this man, he becomes more violent, and controlling to them both. Tobias still skips school to hang out with his buddies, and gets into trouble. Now Tobias decides after a few years of being tortured by his step-father, with beatings, and mind controlling, that he wants to go to a boarding school college, and his step-father tries to dicourage him, because he's jealous that he might succeed in life, and not be controlled by him anymore. They get into a mondo arguement, and it all comes to a head in the end. I won't tell you the rest. You have to see it yourself. Just a fair warning, this movie is good, but has a lot of cursing, and a violent sex scene between Tobias' mother and step-father on their wedding night, not appropriate for children under 14.

DVD Review: movies at their best
Summary: 5 Stars

This is a Great Movie. I had seen it and loved it on TV and just had to have it for my DVD collection.

Description of This Boy's Life

Guys had ducktails. Cars had fins. War was over and America was on a roll. But 1950s life wasn't all fun and games -- especially for Toby Wolff and his divorced mom Caroline, free spirits whose cross-country travels end in the Pacific Northwest, where life will be better. They hope. Year: 1993 Director: Michael Caton Jones Starring: Robert De Niro, Ellen Barkin, Leonardo DiCaprio

Robert De Niro gets top billing, but young Leonardo DiCaprio is the revelation of This Boy's Life, an astute, often painful drama of growing up in the 1950s Pacific Northwest, based on the autobiographical novel by Tobias Woolf. DiCaprio plays Tobias, a good kid with a bad boy streak but an unwavering love for his divorced mother (Ellen Barkin). "I want to be a better boy," he promises from under a greasy pompadour, and tries to prove it when she marries single father Dwight (DeNiro), a bully who parents through intimidation and humiliation. DiCaprio is magnetic in his first starring role, full of anger, hope, and confusion as he drifts back to juvenile delinquency, and his intensity gives the true story of survival and triumph its charge. DeNiro is frightening and pathetic as Dwight, and Dwight's youngest daughter is played by future star and vampire slayer Eliza Dushku. --Sean Axmaker

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