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Grade: C

Verdict: Story of a boy's escape from a Communist labor camp never fully connects with the reality of the situation — or the heart of the audience.

By MELINDA ENNIS
Cox News Service

"I Am David" is the fictional account of a orphaned boy who escapes the Communist labor camp where he was raised and journeys alone across three countries to an uncertain destiny. Yet, despite the emotionally charged premise, the film too often paints a Disneyland facade over the bleak reality of a juvenile gulag refugee in post-World War II Europe.

The 1950s-era camp scenes in Bulgaria achieve an effective grimness, although the camp's exact purpose (is it purely a repository for political prisoners?) and David's reason for being there are only sketchily explained.

But once David begins his journey, the tone shifts to lightness more appropriate for the lost-pet exploits of "The Adventures of Milo and Otis" than a forlorn child's flight from cruelty and oppression.

The story opens with David's escape, a truly tense, compelling moment. Guided by instructions that have been mysteriously provided to him, he makes it over the fence. In the nearby woods, he finds a package with further instructions telling him to head for Denmark. The reason for his destination and the identity of his benefactor are not revealed until the film's end.

Through flashbacks, we learn that 12-year-old David was befriended in the camp by adult prisoner Johannes (Jim Caviezel from "The Passion of the Christ"). Johannes' character is enigmatic, but it could be because Caviezel's ethereal, mystical portrayal seems to be an attempt at reprising his Messiah role.

One of the movie's central problems is the miscasting of young Ben Tibber as David. His hardy appearance and clipped British enunciation suggest a sullen English schoolboy rather than a lonely, starving, East European urchin. His bland persona cannot carry the weight the part demands.

After fleeing Bulgaria as a stowaway on a ship bound for Italy, he meets an assortment of characters who help him along his way. The Italian helpers, including a shipmate on the boat and a baker in a small village, are so cartoon-like you expect them to serve David a heaping plate of spaghetti and belt out "Bella Notte" from "Lady and the Tramp."

Throughout the journey, David effortlessly converses with each person he comes across, whether Italian, American or Swiss (which is too conveniently explained by his instructor's advice to "remember all the languages you heard spoken in the camp"). But David's linguistic capabilities strain credibility, and, more improbably, no one he runs into ever wonders about his accent or what should be his obvious foreignness as a stranger in a strange land.

On the Swiss border, he encounters kindness and love as personified by an old lady played by the incandescent Joan Plowright. While her understated performance as a grandmother figure is sweet, even Plowright can't overcome the film's growing vapidity.

Director Paul Feig seems to have had the best intentions by bringing this beloved, young-adult novel to the screen, tailored for a family audience. But the result is a whitewashed portrait missing the passion and pathos inherent in the subject matter.