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Created Apr 04, 2013 07:10AM PST • Edited May 16, 2023 11:05PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   King of the Hill is a real life Little Rascals, what with pipsqueak brothers living alone during the Great Depression. Amazingly, it’s the truthy autobiography of A.E. Hotchner, Paul Newman’s pal and business partner. Even if fictional, it would still charm and enlighten, as it’s a perfect film and really great movie.

   A boy-wonder, his squirt of a little brother, their troubled parents and the even more troubled adults around them, create a rich tableau through which to bring alive the lost world of the Great Depression. Perhaps most shocking is not that children could live in jeopardy and be treated by authority figures with callous disdain, but rather that things were bad in the beginning and then got worse as the Depression wore on.

   Hotchner was a successful biographer before becoming Newman’s partner in salad dressing. Thus it’s not surprising that his autobiography is so delightful and evocative. What is surprising is that a young Steven Soderbergh didn’t make a false move in adapting Hotchner’s coming-of-age story into a perfect film, one that is by turns charming, funny, tragic and enlightening. It even has a happy ending.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Jesse Bradford played writer A.E. Hotchner’s boyhood doppelgänger. Naturally charming, he’s handsome, smart and believably kind. Just 14 when the movie came out, Bradford has since become a successful adult actor, but doesn’t appear to have replicated the artistic success he achieved in King of the Hill.

   Cameron Boyd is even cuter as his little brother. That’s them in the poster.

   Jeroen Krabbé and Lisa Eichhorn are touching and affecting as their dignified but beleaguered parents. Krabbé plays an indomitable salesman and Eichhorn a tubercular Mother. Bravo.

   The rest of the uniformly terrific cast:

   • Karen Allen brings her bright-eyed sweetness to the role of encouraging teacher.
   • Spalding Gray brings an understated weirdness to the role of adult neighbor with some bad habits.
   • Elizabeth McGovern is casually sexy as his paid female companion.
   • Adrien Brody jumps off screen as a helpful older teen who knows the lay of the land.
   • John McConnell is mildly comical as a mildly corrupt and abusive cop.
   • Amber Benson is tremendously touching as an epileptic girl desperate for normal teen experience.
   • Katherine Heigl made her second movie appearance in King of the Hill as a rich girl charmed by Hotchner. Just a young teen, she’s clearly bound for stardom.
   • Lauryn Hill also jumps off screen as a bored elevator operator. Five years later, she’d be Miseducated.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Perfect 5.0

    A.E. Hotchner and Steven Soderbergh are a formidable pair of story tellers, especially given that their story is a portrait of the writer as a young boy. That writer, Hotchner’s doppelgänger, charms all the girls, young and old, in no small part because of his writing ability and his exceptional brightness. Thus the film is as much a paean to writers as it is to growing up in the Depression.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

    Steven Soderbergh’s third film is a naturalistic masterpiece.

12. Play Perfect 5.0

    Hotchner was Hemingway’s biographer and pal before becoming Newman’s business partner and pal. One suspects that Papa Hemingway would approve of King of the Hill.

    Steven Soderbergh deserves at least half the credit, as he adapted and somewhat fictionalized Hotchner’s autobiography.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Lots of Scenics, Carpenters, half a dozen stunts and a dozen drivers helped Soderbergh make his perfect period piece.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.7

    Kids get manhandled and otherwise bounced around in this School of Hard Knocks.

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Salty 2.0

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    King of the Hill resurrects an America that feels like ancient history, yet existed not even a century ago.

    • Schoolkids write about American heroes such as John D. Rockefeller. How quaintly un-ironic.
    • Playing marbles is a schoolyard skill of tremendous import.
    • A New Deal government job is heaven sent to a family down to its last straw.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0