Michele Massa's blog

He plays Joshua Beal, a fifth-grader at a rich Philadelphia Roman Catholic
boys school who undertakes a personal search for God after his beloved
grandfather dies.

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But the film is loaded with overly cogent “wisdom” from a kid’s point
of view that’s likely to drive some viewers straight toward the exits.
Children, too, will be bored to tears navigating through some of the talky
spiritual gunk.

The ruminations begin when Joshua
learns that his gramps (wonderfully played by Robert Loggia) has cancer.
After the old man dies, the boy wonders if God — grandpa was a devout
Catholic — is planning to take care of the departed. To the surprise of his
parents, classmates and teachers, Joshua embarks on a spiritual mission to
find out if his grandfather is in good hands in the great beyond.

When the kid announces fairly early in voice-over that “people think I
ask too many questions,” it’s the tip-off that the film is going to be
annoying for viewers who don’t think a kid as musing cosmologist is a funny
concept. Joshua questions nuns about the meaning of baptism and damnation,
ponders spirituality with his perplexed friends and tells his best buddy
that he wants a face-to-face meeting with God.

Despite its cute tone, “Wide Awake,” by
writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, has its heart in the right place, and
for many people that’s all that really matters. Cross is an engaging actor,
remarkably free of attitude.
And he’s surrounded by big talent in Denis Leary as the dad, Dana Delany as
the mom and Rosie O’Donnell and Camryn Manheim (from television’s “The
Practice”) as
good-natured nuns.

Shyamalan’s story is clearly autobiographical, and he imbued the tender
tale with a wistful atmosphere as well as a kindly regard for parochial
school, hitting some of the details just right. There are the requisite
classroom miscreants, the nuns trying to keep a lid on things with a mixture
of stern remonstrance and desperate humor, and wry glimpses at the follies
and frailties of adulthood from a child’s perspective.

For those willing to accept the saccha-
rine tone, there is some poignancy in the relationship between Joshua and
his ex-football player grandpa, who tries to deny the truth about mortality
to keep from crushing a believing little heart. Before long, “Wide Awake”
is pulling the strings and the heart starts its little dance, helping to
explain why we sometimes sit through movies that aren’t much but have a
thread, a small light, something.