The Book of Henry

From Book to Life!
“The Book of Henry” offers some unique storytelling about a young, precocious, fatherless eleven-year-old boy named Henry Carpenter (portrayed by Jaeden Lieberher), who witnessed the child abuse of his girlfriend, Christina, next door to him and suffers a tumor in his brain. He is raised by a single mother (Naomi Watts) and has a brother named Peter Carpenter (Jacob Tremblay). His main goal is to put his plan into motion on defending his girlfriend. There were many turn of the events and life lessons about child abuse, bullying, and child protection from any harms and dangers throughout the course of humanity. I find it very interesting to see those characters (or people) who suffered these horrible conditions based on reality at schools, public, or anywhere. The film put a lot of emotion and concern to it on child characters and the dying-Henry scene as an advantage of family-genre films as well as putting younger child actors in this teen-oriented film as an advantage of PG-13 rating. Henry, along with Peter, have a lot of things in common in order to make things better to everyone, especially Christina. It’s like me who wanted to do or make things better and happier in the future.

The film was amazing as the storytelling fits perfectly for the two child actors, Jaeden and Jacob, to learn the meanings of life and humanity all around. These two have taught a lot about child abuse that would affect children and families in real life from bullies or anyone who torments someone. That was very brave and thoughtful to watch this film. The film itself contains lots of elements from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic World as these performances trigger the similarities to this film. I also like the comedic performances of Watts and Silverman as these women acted like “teens with crazy mishaps” throughout the film. Every mothers should see this film if they have things going on about their children.

However, I didn’t enjoy those scenes with the usage profanity to child characters as this would grab their attentions to do the same in reality and on set. The scene when the character dying seems scary but adds a lot of emotion to families. I also didn’t like the mother character proving a sugar-rush behavior to Peter. Seems like a warning for people who eat sweets most of the time. The writing and direction was a tiny-bit awful, but I did like how they expressed fear as part of the story line.

Overall, this film was amazing and well-told to younger children for generations. This film was full of imaginations and public concerns that may teach children and families about abuse and protection as these course of actions would send the message to public. I have a good reputation on watching this film just like back in E.T. and was surprised that this film was named after me or anyone with that name. Remember E.T. that he’ll always right here for you.
Grade: B-
(Review by Henry Pham - Richland College)