obert Garfield (Morse), a successful photographer, gets a special Fed Ex package: an old baseball glove. It belonged to his childhood friend Sully-John (Will Rothhaar). Getting it means only one thing. Sully won't be needing it now. Or ever.
Garfield travels back for the funeral to the small New England town where he grew up. His secret wish is to reacquaint himself with his other childhood friend—and onetime sweetheart—Carol Gerber. That's when he gets the other bad news: Carol died a few years back.
The news is almost too much to bear. Later, Garfield wanders back to his childhood home, now a derelict ruin in a snowbound neighborhood. He walks inside, into his old room. And travels back in his mind to 1960, to the day of his 11th birthday.
Though he covets a red bicycle, little Bobby (Yelchin) receives the most penurious gift—a library card—from his self-absorbed mother, Liz (Davis). But he also meets a new neighbor, who has taken the room upstairs. Mom doesn't trust Ted Brautigan (Hopkins) because he carries his belongings in paper bags. But Bobby takes to the oddly quiet man immediately. When his mom cancels Bobby's birthday dinner because she must work late at her real-estate firm, Brautigan sits up with Bobby on the veranda and talks to him about books.
He also asks Bobby for a favor. Keep his eyes open for "low men" in the neighborhood: men with dark clothes and dark hats who drive flashy cars and cast long shadows. They are after Ted, and Ted wants to avoid them.
Bobby agrees. That summer, Bobby, Sully and Carol (Mika Boorem) while away their days at the creek. Ted tells Bobby that one day he will kiss Carol, and that first kiss will be the one by which all others are measured.
Later, Bobby finds Ted in his room, staring intently into space and muttering strange words. Frightened, Bobby hugs him—and Ted starts back to life. In his mind, Ted has seen the low men coming. But he has also passed something on to Bobby—something that may or may not remain with him through this eventful year.
Atlantis sinks under its own weight
Though it takes its name from Stephen King's collection of linked short stories, Hearts in Atlantis basically compresses the events in its longest tale, "Low Men in Yellow Coats," and the final story, "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling." It has much in common with other, admirable adaptations of King's coming-of-age stories, notably Stand By Me.
But despite standout performances from Hopkins as the gentle, haunted Brautigan, and Davis as the narcissistic Liz, Atlantis ultimately compares poorly with other King movies. The sunny nostalgia of Atlantis seems very familiar, with few new twists or fresh takes on things to make the movie distinctive in any particular way. Where Stand By Me pops off the screen with a crackling script and great wit, Atlantis feels by turns overly sentimental, generic and flat. This is not helped by frequent voice-over narration that is far too obvious.
Hicks has wisely pared away many of the more blatant supernatural and SF elements of the stories and chosen to concentrate on the key relationship between Brautigan and Bobby. But here again, Atlantis comes up short, owing in part to the overeager performance by Yelchin, who, despite a certain charm, is no Haley Joel Osment, and in part to a script that forces the big moments in a way that feels false. (Goldman also allows a couple of jarring anachronisms to slip in: Characters say things like "I'm dying here" or "Whatever.")
The film also makes some curious choices, such as relegating Sully-John to the background once the glove is explained, and showing too little of the budding romance between Bobby and Carol. When their inevitable kiss arrives, it carries little emotional resonance. A side plot involving Bobby's mom and her nefarious boss feels tacked on. And the mystery of the low men, Brautigan's powers and his ultimate fate is breezed over too quickly.
Hicks has added a touching coda in the present day between Morse's adult Bobby and a neighborhood girl, but it's too little, too late.
