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The Kid (often titled as Disney's The Kid) is a 2000 American film, directed by Jon Turteltaub and starring Bruce Willis and Spencer Breslin. It co-stars Emily Mortimer, Lily Tomlin, Chi McBride, and Jean Smart.

Plot[]

Russ Duritz works as an image consultant, but he's impolite to people and has had a strained relationship with his father. One day, he sees a red plane flying over his head but no one else seems to have seen it.

Later, he and his assistant Amy meet a stadium manager named Bob Riley. Riley had promised to set aside 5% of the ticket sales to fund a baseball camp for disadvantaged children, but he actually kept the money. So, Russ, has them make a video of some children throwing a pie at Riley, to get him off the hook. Afterward, in a Japanese restaurant, Amy feels that the video is unethical, and Russ throws the tape away at first, but he secretly retrieves it off screen.

When Russ gets home he sees a shadow of a boy, and he immediately calls his secretary to change his house security system. She replies that he is being paranoid and that it could be a neighbor's child. He hears someone inside his house and gets out of bed to investigate when he finds a toy plane with the name Rusty on it on his front step which he assumes had been left there by his father for him. Russ goes back to bed and wakes up hearing noises again. He then walks around the house until he finds the boy and begins a chase through the house. They go to the streets and reach the airport where he sees the boy entering a "Skyway Diner". He tries to catch him there but no one inside has seen the boy. When Russ walks outside looking for the boy, he turns around to look back at the diner, but it has vanished. He thinks he is hallucinating again.

So the next day Russ goes to a psychiatrist and tells her that he only needs five minutes and a powerful medicine to stop his hallucinations. After refusing the whole psychology session he gets his pills and leaves. He turns the television on and watches the news, but after he goes to the kitchen the channel has changed to Ed, Edd n Eddy. He then surprises the boy in his couch eating his popcorn. He asks the boy who he is and what has he come for, to which the boy replies to take his toy plane, but that when he saw the television and the popcorn he couldn't resist. Russ then asks the boy his name and finds out it's his own. Both begin comparing memories and their birthmarks and figure out that Rusty is none other than Russ as a kid.

Rusty then starts asking Russ things such as if he has a dog named Chester, whom Rusty has dreamed of owning, if he has become a pilot, and if Russ has a wife. Russ replies that he can't handle dogs with his constant traveling, that he is not a pilot but an image consultant, and that has no wife. Rusty tells him that he dislikes his future. The next day, when Amy finds out about the boy, she likes him and wants to take him to eat ice cream but Russ makes fun of his weight. Rusty then recalls some bullies bothering him the same way, so Russ brings him to a client's boxing ring and teaches him to fight.

Amy starts wondering about Russ and Rusty's similarities and begins to think they are father and son. After shouting at Russ for hiding such a secret from her, both Russ and Rusty finally decide to tell her the truth, though they end up arguing instead. Amy watches Rusty and Russ argue and sees the two fighting, arguing, gesturing the same way, at which she faints. Later, Russ and Amy talk about who will take care of him during his client's wedding and Amy proposes to take him but Russ says he will humiliate him. Rusty falls during the wedding ceremony, and at the reception, he asks Amy to marry him. She thinks it's Russ sending her the message.

When she finds out that Russ saved and aired the Riley tape, she gets mad at him. She tells him that he should try to learn more from Rusty and leaves disappointed. Russ finally decides to cancel all of his appointments and spend an afternoon trying to find out why Rusty is there and what he needs to fix from the past. He recalls a fight his younger self lost on his eighth birthday. That makes them go back to 1968.

Rusty wins that fight and saves the life of a three-legged dog called Tripod, but then Russ remembers that the worst part of that day wasn't actually the fight itself. Rusty is hauled into the principal's office for fighting and his mother is called in to take him home. When they get home, Rusty's father immediately gets his mother back inside, as the doctor had ordered her against leaving the house. He then lashes out at Rusty for causing his mother more stress and accuses him of trying to kill her faster with the stunt he pulled. Rusty cries while in an attempt to tell his father he found the screw he lost, but his father refuses to listen to him and tells him to stop crying, while rubbing Rusty's eyes painfully, causing Rusty to develop a lifelong eye twitch to suppress his tears. Rusty's father then tells his son to grow up faster, before quickly heading back inside to tend to his wife. Once their father has gone back inside Russ tells Rusty that his mother will die before his next birthday, then comforts him. Russ tells Rusty that he wasn't responsible for the death of his mother, and that his father had raged at him simply because he was scared about the huge responsibility of having to raise his children alone.

They go to the "Skyway Diner" and keep talking about the fight, acknowledging that they've failed to change the outcome of Rusty's eighth birthday by winning the fight, but congratulating each other on their birthday. Suddenly a dog comes in and goes directly to Rusty. They hear a man call the dog Chester, they both follow him and find out that the red plane is Russ' plane and that the man with the dog is Russ's older self. They realize that they really changed the future and that Russ would, in late middle age, be a pilot, have Amy as his wife, have three children and a dog named Chester. Then Russ returns to his time, arranges plans to see his dad to reconcile with him, buys tickets to Hawaii for his secretary, and goes to Amy's house with a puppy. The movie ends as she invites him in.

Cast[]

  • Bruce Willis as Russ Duritz
  • Spencer Breslin as Young Rusty
  • Emily Mortimer as Amy
  • Lily Tomlin as Janet
  • Chi McBride as Kenny
  • Jean Smart as Deidre Lefever
  • Dana Ivey as Dr. Suzanne Alexander
  • Zach Redo as James
  • Brian McGregor as Vince
  • Reiley McClendon as Mark
  • Brian Tebbits as Herbert
  • Brian McLaughlin as George
  • Steve Tom as Bruce, Lawyer
  • Larry King as himself
  • Jeri Ryan as herself
  • Nick Chinlund as himself
  • Matthew Perry as Mr. Vivian (uncredited)
  • Daniel von Bargen as Sam Duritz
  • Elizabeth Arlen as Gloria Duritz
  • Melissa McCarthy as Sky Diner Waitress

Gallery[]

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