French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is an established auteur, with modern classics like Delicatessen and Amélie making a case for him as one of the most visually clever and narratively audacious filmmakers out there, which makes it all the more frustrating that The Weinstein Company has utterly botched its release of The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet.
You may have heard about this one – it opened in Europe way back in 2013 and was warmly received over there. But for some reason, TWC has continually delayed its release up until this summer.
Now, the plan is to quietly drop the film in theaters next week, and as more of an obligatory move than a show of confidence in the pic, the company has put out a new trailer, showcasing what looks to be an endearingly quirky and fun little adventure. Why it’s been treated so poorly, I have no idea.
Here’s the full synopsis:
T.S. Spivet lives on a ranch in Montana with his mother who is obsessed with the morphology of beetles, his father (a cowboy born a hundred years too late) and his 14 year-old sister who dreams of becoming Miss America. T.S. is a 10 year-old prodigy with a passion for cartography and scientific inventions. One day, he receives an unexpected call from the Smithsonian museum telling him that he is the winner of the very prestigious Baird prize for his discovery of the perpetual motion machine and that he is invited to a reception in his honor where he is expected to give a speech. Without telling anyone, he sets out on a freight train across the U.S.A. to reach Washington DC. There is also Layton, twin brother of T.S., who died in an accident involving a firearm in the family’s barn, which no one ever speaks of. T.S. was with him, measuring the scale of the gunshots for an experiment, and he doesn’t understand what happened.
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet will open in select US theaters starting July 31.
