Movie Review: 'Batkid Begins'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- When Batkid Begins begins, you feel pretty good about our species.
When it ends, you feel even better.
This spirit-lifting documentary is about one particular day in November 2013, in one particular city (San Francisco, it just so happens), when a five-year-old cancer patient has a wish granted, highlighting the contemporary "flash" phenomenon and the positive side of the power of galloping social media as it becomes a viral sensation.
It was a day on which the City by the Bay transformed itself into Gotham City for a superhero scenario and public crime-stopping event so that a boy's "Make-a-Wish" dream could come true.
Miles Scott, diagnosed with leukemia before his second birthday, is the focus of Batkid Begins, subtitled "The Wish Heard Around the World."
When representatives of the San Francisco Greater Bay Area chapter of the Make-a-Wish Foundation asked Miles before his fifth birthday what he wanted to do if he could do anything he wanted, his answer was, "I want to be Batman."
And this response set in motion a series of preparatory events by a number of well-intentioned people, some of whom knew Miles and most of whom did not, that would lead to a happening that defied category or description.
You might expect that our knowledge of the boy's health would throw a pall over the proceedings and thus undermine the film's "entertainment" value, but this turns out not to be the case. Our understandable sadness somehow coexists with our appreciation of what is transpiring.
Miles would become a miniature costumed version of the Caped Crusader for a day and would come to the rescue of everyone who needed him to. And, in the process, he would help to restore at least a bit of our faith in human nature, as thousands upon thousands of interested observers flocked to San Fran at one time to be part of the event.
Director Dana Nachman (Witch Hunt, Love Hate Love, The Human Experiment), who co-wrote the script with Kurt Kuenne, knows she's got material with real emotional power and finds a way to tell her story without exploiting it and at the same time combat any kind of cynical response.
Yes, there are talking-head interviews conveying behind-the-scenes information, but they also serve to help us get to know the everyday heroes and heroines pulling off this planning miracle and explosion of international goodwill for all the right reasons.
One thing we're curious about and don't get to explore are the motivations of folks who just showed up as spectators, some from great distances. But we're too captivated not to be forgiving.
This is a documentary during which you're always either smiling or crying, and one that has already spawned a dramatic version to be produced by and star Julia Roberts.
So we'll make a wish for 3 stars out of 4 for the heartwarming Batkid Begins, a bittersweet documentary that demonstrates clearly that you can feel bad and feel good at the same time.
