Jack

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Stars: Robin Williams, Bill Cosby, Diane Lane, Jennifer Lopez, Brian Kerwin, Fran Drescher

Year: 1996 Running Time: 113 mins Rating:

Comedy drama starring Robin Williams as a 10-year-old boy who suffers from a disease that makes him age four times faster than a normal boy. Owing a major debt to Penny Marshall's Big, this sees Williams in full-flow comedy cute mode. Bill Cosby plays his long-suffering teacher and Jennifer Lopez makes an early pre-superstardom appearance.

Review

Rapid ageing usually forms part of a horror film.

Here it provides a showcase for Robin Williams as a 10-year-old boy embarrassingly trapped inside a 40-year-old body.

We, too, are embarrassed at the situations into which the adult-looking Williams is forced at school but he, like the film, comes good in a triumphant finale when, as a 17-year-old graduate looking 68, he tells parents and fellow-students that his life has been brilliant and spectacular.

Love him or loathe him, Williams is virtually the whole show, although Diane Lane is unexpectedly good as his spirited mother.