Everyone's Hero

Welcome back to this week's Blog! Sometimes when a movie is released to theaters, it arrives to very little fanfare and box office reception, sometimes disappearing within a matter of weeks without being given the chance to survive. But thank goodness for home video and DVD! Without this format, some movies would go completely unnoticed. And in this day and age, I'll very rarely go to the movies except once, maybe twice, a year at most; I'll usually wait until the DVD before checking it out. One such movie that deserves a chance is the recent Fox Home Entertainment animated release "Everyone's Hero", the final work from the late Christopher Reeve.

"Everyone's Hero" is the story of Yankee Irving, a 10-year-old boy growing up in New York in 1932. He's small for his age, and nobody around him gives him a snowball's chance of proving himself. He has a love for baseball, but in his neighborhood he's always the last one picked for sandlot baseball. Even with the love of his parents, he still seems insecure and unable to prove himself...

...until one day he learns that Babe Ruth's prized baseball bat has been stolen during the World Series. So Yankee Irving takes it upon himself to embark on a cross-country journey to retrieve Ruth's stolen bat from an unscrupulous character and get it back to the "Bambino" before it's too late. It's on his travels that Yankee discovers the meaning of hope and perseverance against all odds. It's funny, lighthearted, and filled with warmth and heart. If this story is quite familiar, it should. We can all relate to Yankee Irving at one point or another in our lives. And it certainly relates to the odyssey Christopher Reeve embarked on in the last decade of his life.

Reeve, who served as one of the film's three directors and six executive producers, brought this film to life from a story by Howard Jonas and a screenplay by Robert Kurtz and Jeff Hand. Reeve began working on "Everyone's Hero" in late 2003, partnering with IDT Entertainment, a digital telecommunications company venturing into its first foray of film production and CGI animation. Reeve saw the first development of the film's story and storyboarding process, working tirelessly to put his heart into the film. After Reeve's untimely passing in 2004, Colin Brady and Daniel St. Pierre continued moving the vision forward, honoring Reeve's original ideas and vision. With the artists at IDT, they brought the film to completion for its 2006 release.

The talented voice cast bringing the characters to life also had many personal and professional connections to Reeve - among them his wife Dana Reeve (who also served as one of the executive producers); friends William H. Macy, Rob Reiner, Mandy Patinkin, Robert Wagner, Richard Kind, and Whoopi Goldberg (who starred in Reeve's 1997 directorial debut "In the Gloaming"); and in addition to Brian Dennehy, Raven Symone, Jake Austin (as young Yankee Irving), Forest Whitaker, and real-life New York Yankees manager Joe Torre - making "Everyone's Hero" a wonderful ensemble piece.

IDT and Fox have brought "Everyone's Hero" to DVD in a nice little presentation that both kids and kids at heart will enjoy. The film is presented as a DVD-18, with one side carrying the film in a full-frame format and the other side in its original 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. As a CGI film, the transfer is nothing less than sharp and crisp throughout. The audio is presented in English Dolby Digital 5.1 and Spanish Dolby 2.0 sound, with optional English, Spanish, and French subtitles and English closed-captions. On a standard monitor or an HD monitor, this film is going to look and sound really great.

The DVD also contains several additional features - not terribly a lot by comparison to, say, any Pixar or Disney offering, but then again, not a lot is needed. On each side of the disc is a running full-length audio commentary with Colin Brady, Daniel St. Pierre, Robert Kurtz, and Jeff Hand, who discuss working with Reeve and the animators at IDT, honoring Reeve's vision and carrying it forward after his death.

We also have two behind-the-scenes featurettes on the disc, one per each side. The first one is "The Little Guy's Journey: The Making of 'Everyone's Hero'". This featurette takes a standard look at the development of the film and features interviews with the cast and crew, and we get to see the work in progress, from pencil animation to storyboard development, from rough work-in-progress animatics to their final forms, to the cast's performances and nuances into their characters.

The other featurette, "Remembering Chris", is the more touching of the two, as cast and crew discuss their memories of working with and knowing Christopher Reeve. Here we get to see video footage from 2004 of Reeve directing and overseeing the first storyboard developments and story ideas for the film. Those particularly closest to Reeve - especially Dana Reeve (who would follow her husband in death in 2006), Kind, Wagner, Macy, Goldberg, Reiner, and Patinkin - offer heartfelt anecdotes and personal memories of knowing him over the years. Other cast members and production crew have high praise for Reeve and his uncompromising vision, remaining firmly committed to honoring his vision and standards for the film after his death and seeing his heart all over the film upon its release. It's extremely bittersweet to know that the footage of Reeve in this featurette is among the last video of him before his death.

The DVD is rounded out with the original theatrical trailer for "Everyone's Hero", also presented in anamorphic widescreen format, along with a preview trailer for the upcoming "Care Bears" movie and several generic Fox Kids and Fox DVD titles.

"Everyone's Hero" is a wonderful little film and a perfect final coda to the lives and careers of Christopher and Dana Reeve, to whom the film is dedicated in their memories. As he stated in his autobiography "Still Me", the real heroes are not the larger-than-life figures who move great mountains, but the ordinary people who fight each day to make a difference. That definition certainly defined the Reeves, and it certainly defines Yankee Irving in this movie. This DVD definitely belongs in every family's film library. If you've not seen it, check it out.

I'll have more notes and thoughts later this week, followed by another full-length review next week. See you then!