Production and Reception
The film was originally to be directed by screenwriter David Mickey Evans, but he was later replaced by Richard Donner, due to Evans' inexperience. Re-shoots followed after poor test screenings and the budget jumped from $15 million to $35 million. The original script called for more fantasy sequences involving a worm man and zombies. These ideas were scrapped when Richard Donner replaced Evans. The film opened to mostly mixed reviews from critics and lackluster box office results. It currently holds a 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin both vilified this film for presenting fantasy as a way of escaping child abuse. Said Ebert, "I was so appalled, watching this kid hurtling down the hill in his pathetic contraption, that I didn't know which ending would be worse. If he fell to his death, that would be unthinkable, but if he soared up to the moon, it would be unforgivable—because you can't escape from child abuse in little red wagons, and even the people who made this picture should have been ashamed to suggest otherwise."
Because the film in fact ends with Bobby successfully evading his stepfather forever, viewers (including Ebert himself) have taken to speculating on the "true" ending, assuming that the one presented was a case of an unreliable narrator. In interviews, director Richard Donner has insisted that there is no cryptic, implied ending to the film.
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Famous quotes containing the words production and, production and/or reception:
“Production and consumption are the nipples of modern society. Thus suckled, humanity grows in strength and beauty; rising standard of living, all modern conveniences, distractions of all kinds, culture for all, the comfort of your dreams.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)