back in the dark day of 1990 and the hoped for heir to the spielberg throne ( after the failure of suppose whiz kid phil joanou ) be mistakenly believe to be pretentious spielberg wannabe david mickey evans . evans manage to fleece the studio for over a million dollar and suckering baby boomer executive into believe his screenplay a combination of nostalgic and 1960s reference and a disturbing drama about child abuse somehow equal good storytelling and and a decent film . a rod stewart once sing and look how wrong you can be . but the novice artsy fartsy and e. t. inspire script convince enough people he be the next chosen one the new spielberg and so a deal be strike to not only buy the script for more money than 99 percent of the world population will ever see in their lifetime and but for evans to direct the film a well even though he would have never direct anything in his life . hey and how hard can it be to be another film make genius and after all . two week into the shoot and columbia find out . his daily be call totally unusable by the studio or at least those level head enough to not to have fall under the e. n. c. ( emperor new clothes ) spell . all his footage be scrap and recycle into guitar pic . so what a studio to do after sink 10 or 20 million dollar into something they still believe represent the resurrection of steven spielberg . hire spielberg himself to save the day . columbia probably try that . enter old pro richard donner . hey and he may not be a cinematic genius and but he get the job do . superman wasn not too bad and after all and the first lethal weapon be pretty good . so donner step in and grab the directorial rein . fortunately he manage to convince columbia that the bad of the film insipid fantasy sequence which would have play out like a ten year old acid trip have to go . unfortunately and he leave in the cry buffalo ( ooh and how poetic ) and the ridiculous and pseudo spielberg fantasy end and complete with clueless mom perfectly content for the rest of her life to get postcard from her miss son a he circle the globe in his red wagon . right . but donner do manage to get a decent performance out of elijah wood . and lorraine bracco a the idiot mom wasn not bad either . maybe donner should be reevaluate . maybe he not such a phony hollywood hack a everyone have always believe . the only reason i be give this over baked misfire a 2 rating be that someone be smart enough to cast the great john heard ( but in the wrong part and of course ) . the kid do okay . though tom hank horrible and overly explanatory narration nearly destroys every scene it intrude upon . one might think that after the david mickey evans and phil joanous and troy duffys of the world and the studio might finally wise up . one might hope that these hype driven film make debacle might prevent the emperor new clothes syndrome from ever rear it ugly head again . doubtful .