I love this movie so much

So much average

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It's 1933 St. Louis. Aaron Kurlander (Jesse Bradford) is an imaginative kid in Miss Mathey (Karen Allen)'s class. Christina Sebastian (Katherine Heigl) is the pretty girl in class. He befriends rich classmate Billy Thompson and puts up a front about his family. His friend Lester (Adrien Brody) gets him a job as a caddy. Ella McShane (Amber Benson) is a shy neighbor who likes him and suffers from seizures. Patrolman Burns is the corrupt cruel traffic cop. Doorman Ben uses Aaron to deliver booze to Mr. Mungo (Spalding Gray) who spends time with call girl Lydia (Elizabeth McGovern). His little brother Sullivan is sent to live with their uncle. His mother (Lisa Eichhorn) goes back to the sanatorium for tuberculosis. His domineering father (Jeroen Krabbé) leaves for a job to sell watches. He is left alone having to survive with only his wits.This is an interesting place that Steven Soderbergh has brought the audience to. The many side characters are all great. There are so many of them that the movie relies a lot on its young star to keep it together. Jesse Bradford is a competent child actor and he keeps the character compelling. It's a really tough job and it would have been great for him to have a companion best friend. Adrien Brody is the closest character and should have more screen time. I also would like it to take on a darker tone. This reminds me a bit of Barton Fink and it would be great to have more of that tone.

Based on A.E. Hotchner's memoirs, writer/director Steven Soderbergh's 1993 adaptation of KING OF THE HILL (KofH) is the poignant, often dark, but ultimately uplifting story of 12-year-old Aaron Kurlander (Jesse Bradford, who comes across as sensitive and resilient at the same time), whose family struggles to get by in St. Louis, Missouri during The Great Depression. Like many of their neighbors, the Kurlanders can barely hold onto their cheap, shabby hotel room, though they do their best to find work and keep up a facade of doing well. Aaron contributes to the charade by telling his classmates wild yet convincingly-told stories of the glamor of his parents' lives as spies and archaeologists hobnobbing with the likes of Charles Lindbergh. Despite the Kurlanders' best efforts, they're slowly pulled apart when Aaron's traveling salesman dad (Jeroen Krabbe) can't make enough money to feed everyone. Soon Aaron's little brother Sullivan (the appealing Cameron Boyd, who looks strikingly like a little-boy version of the Olsen twins back in their FULL HOUSE days) is sent to live with relatives for the time being; Mom (Lisa Eichhorn) has TB, eventually going to a sanitarium; and finally Dad finds a job as a traveling watch salesman in Oklahoma, leaving Aaron to fend for himself and dodge the mean hotel porter to keep from being locked out of the family's apartment.Aaron tries all kinds of money-making schemes so he can bring his family back home, but it seems like God or Fate or whoever is in charge of KotH's universe insists on bitch-slapping the kid every step of the way. A rich, sympathetic classmate (who doesn't know Aaron's broke because our hero is too proud to admit it) gives Aaron canaries to breed in order to sell them to the pet shop, but when the canaries are born, they're all female, and female canaries don't sing, so all Aaron can get is 50¢ for the lot of them. A pre-PIANIST Adrien Brody, about 19 or 20 during filming, is a raffish presence as Lester, the juvenile delinquent down the hall with a heart of gold and a brotherly attitude towards Aaron. Lester tries to include the kid in jobs such as caddying for rich golfers, but Aaron tees them off by losing the ball in the ball-washing doohickey. Aaron tries to be kind to their neighbor Ella (Amber Benson), a sickly but sweet young girl, but that backfires when she gets so nervous dancing with him that she has an epileptic fit. When Aaron gets a medal during his graduation ceremony (nice bit with Lester there to cheer as Aaron's name is called, what with the Kurlanders being scattered all over the country), even that bit of joy is snatched from him as he overhears jealous classmates whispering that he only got the medal because the school authorities know he's poor and feel sorry for him (yeah, it couldn't possibly be because Aaron gets the best grades and writes imaginative stories and essays that blow those over-privileged brats out of the water).Over the course of KotH, just about everyone Aaron cares about is either sent away, moves away, dies, or gets arrested. Jeez, if it wasn't one thing, it was another! Interestingly, it seems like every time Aaron has an emotional upheaval, the film becomes more beautiful to look at, thanks to Elliot Davis' golden-hued photography, and yet the film's beauty doesn't cheapen or sentimentalize the painful events our young hero must live through. Aaron and the film's other good guys are kind-hearted, unself-pitying, and earnest enough that I was rooting for them even as I groaned to myself, "Good grief, isn't this poor kid ever gonna catch a break?" Much like the final reel of THE PIANIST, when the resourceful Aaron's plans to reunite his family finally succeed and life becomes good again, it's as much of a relief to us viewers as it is to the Kurlanders. Soderbergh's adaptation of Hotchner's life story often slathers the misery on so thick, I was still afraid something else might go horribly wrong for our beleaguered hero at the last minute. (For instance, as little brother Sullivan jumps up and down on his new bed, I half-expected him to accidentally bounce off the bed and break his neck. Don't worry, he doesn't. :-)). I came away with the feeling that Aaron would never again take the good things in his life for granted. The delicate balance of drama and humor in Soderbergh's fine writing and direction, as well as superb acting from an ensemble that also includes Spalding Gray, Elizabeth McGovern, Karen Allen, and Lauryn Hill -- yup, that Lauryn Hill (who later appeared with Brody in the 1998 indie drama RESTAURANT) -- makes KotH a little gem well worth seeking out on TV, especially since it's still not on DVD but has been on the HBO and Cinemax lineups lately as of this writing. If you like fact-based stories about young people overcoming obstacles, or if you want to catch folks like Brody, Bradford, or a very young Katherine Heigl in memorable early roles, check out KotH.

This is a beautiful movie about an enterprising young man who survives various hardships during the depression. It has a bitter edge but isn't excessive and brings back tales of my grandmother's of how her family coped during the depression. My grandmother's parents were far more functional than the frail ill mother and the traveling salesman father who basically abandons his child to work out of state. I agree with other comments it hardly seems American because it is so deep without smashing the hammer down on our heads. Even though it is harsh I think it is suitable for older children if nothing more than an abject lesson about how real and difficult life really was. The irony is that America still exists to a lesser degree we just don't see it in the movies or on TV.

Over the years this little gem of a film has become a personal favourite. I revisit it continuously, I enjoy showing it to someone who never heard of it and it never fails. The emotions are renewed and reinvigorated with each viewing. Jesse Bradford is simply phenomenal and so is Adrian Brody, yes him, "the kissing pianist" in a remarkable early performance. The face of Karen Allen, as the teacher, listening to Jesse Bradford read his tall tale, profoundly aware that she has someone truly special in her class, is so beautiful that goes in an out of my memory bank more often than the names of some of my closest relatives. Spalding Gray and Elizabeth McGovern's characters deserve a full movie of their own. Lisa Eichhorn's tender fear of having to leave her children behind is just another of the ravishing notes of this stunning film. If you haven't seen it. Give yourself the pleasure. You are going to love every little bit of it.