It took more than one viewing for me to really like this. First viewing, first ten minutes, it felt too weak to have reached DVD distribution. Then it picked up but it took special circumstances for me to watch it a second time.
The second time, to me that was okay. The third and fourth viewings it was really okay.
The start of the film felt way too high brow. Repeated viewing say no, that is just the family with parents that enjoy that approach. Pseudo high brow? Not really, but the kids need a different mix.
*
Around the same time I was also watching 17 Again, a big-ish budget Zac Efron that is widely respected, and I actually prefer Beautiful Ohio.
I find 17 Again to have a lot of amazing details and sequences, way above this story for that. Just this one seems to flow better. No little chunks of boredom among all of the detail. They can both be understood as considering traps that people used to fall into, still do, and both feel to be worthwhile and very different to each other, just I can now like Beautiful Ohio all the way through.
17 Again is mostly high quality in a range of different ways, this is quality in rather different ways.
