Info

• Scarlett As: Kathy Caldwell
• Other Cast: Eva Mendes, Judge Reinhold, Romy Walthall, and Alex D. Linz
• Directed by: Erik Fleming
• Written by: Matthew Flynn
• Release Year: 1999
• Genre: Comedy |Family | Fantasy
• Rating: PG (usa) / PG (uk)
• Filming locations: Santa Clarita, California, USA
• Production companies: Pig Productions

Sypnosis

Kathy Cauldwell is 14 and totally unhappy with her life. She thinks her parents are just embarassing, she doesn’t understand why she has still a nanny and is forced to live with the pig-like creature that her parents call George. In her phantasy she writes Jean-Jaques, a French boy from the Internet, who comes to rescue her. But life goes on and Kathy still ‘suffers’ from the ‘little’ jokes her 8-year old Brother plays on her. The parents now leave for France for 2 weeks to make ‘bicycle-holidays’ and to ‘see places that most tourists never get the chance to see’ (as it’s written in the prospect). During that time Matilda, the Mexican nanny, is in charge. She always smiles and is always friendly which drives Kathy crazy.
George and Freud, his best friend, had made a ‘frozen thing’ soon before the parents left. They took everything they could find in the kitchen and mixed it and put it in the freezer. Now, about 10 days later, Matilda finds it. George is very happy, he’s forgotten it already, and calls Freud, he should come over A.S.A.P. Kathy doesn’t want to see her brother so she sends him to Matildas room, the only room George hasn’t damaged yet. First he doesn’t want to go, but then he’s too curious and he enters together with the ‘frozen thing’. He finds a little chest with figures of animals made of stone. Next to that lies a book that is merged with leather. He opens it and is so fascinated by its content that he doesn’t notice how his ‘frozen thing’ begins to melt and drops on the figures. Somehow magic begins to work and when the ‘frozen thing’ falls into the chest and he wants to grab it it doesn’t take long and George is a pig.
Matilda is gardening outside and gets suddenly a cold shiver. She enters the house and finds as well as Kathy and Freud a pig. But where is George. While Freud looks for him in the house, Matilda goes to her room, where there is still smoke. Soon after that the answer is clear: George is the pig, the pig is George. First, Kathy doesn’t want to believe it, but when she tells the pig to get George’s favorite thing from his room and it does it, she’s also convinced. Now there is the question: How does George become normal again before the parents get back? The only person who’s maybe able to do that, Matilda’s grandmother, lives in a small village in Mexico and has no phone. So the three leave together with George, the pig, for Mexico.
When they arrive there, quite a few things happen: Kathy yells at Matilda and her grandmother and leaves, Freud searchs her together with ‘George’ while Matilda gets the ingredients for the magic soup that should bring George back. It’s evening and George hasn’t found Kathy yet, she’s found new friends and is at their house. Suddenly ‘George’ begins to run, Freud follows him, but his track ends in front of the local butcher’s shop (the butcher itself is very mean). Next night is full mond, the only time when George can be brought back, until then he must be rescued. Will they all be home in a normal state until the parents come home?

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Trailer

Trivia & Facts

• Scarlett Johannson and Alex D. Linz previously played siblings in Home Alone 3.
• Eva Mendes’s long partner Ryan Gosling says the film is underrated.
• To punish Nick Fuoco after the mess that he made Eva Mendes tells him that he can’t watch “TGIF” which was a television block on ABC which started in 1989 and aired every friday night. In 1999 the shows that would be airing when this movie came out would be “Two Of a Kind(1998)”, Brothers keeps (1998),” Sabrina The Teenage Witch(1996),” and “Boy Meets World(1993).”
• When George puts Freud in a headlock he starts creaming out different wrestling finishing moves which were moves by WCW and WWF wrestlers. The scorpion death drop was Stings finisher, the torture rack was Lex Lugers finisher, the DDT was Jake The Snake Roberts finisher, and Ken Shamrocks finisher was the Ankle Lock.
• Even though you can’t fully see it, Eva Mendes’s red book bag is a JanSport which was extremely popular at that time.
• Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes would work together again in The Spirit (2008), released closed to a decade later.
• 20 years later, Michael Giacchino would score another film featuring Scarlett Johansson, “Jojo Rabbit”.
• You see Eva Mendes’s character in this movie is wearing an UCLA T shirt but in reality Mendes went to California State University, Northridge.
• When Nick Fuoco, and Alex D. Linz are left alone in the kitchen they make a huge mess with lots of different junk foods, which included two different flavors of breyers ice cream, Skippy peanut butter, twizzlers candy , M&M milk chocolate candy, Oreo cookies, Captain Crunch cereal, lucky charms cereal, crunch bar, Skittles, popsicles, gummy bears, and poptarts.
• This was Jeanette Nolan’s final theatrical movie before her death on June 5, 1998, at the age of eighty-six. She died only three weeks after this movie was released. Her late son Tim McIntire had co-starred with Robert Redford in Brubaker (1980).
• In a scene where Scarlett Johansson, and Nick Fuoco, are about to eat breakfast at the kitchen table they have a box of Captain Crunch, Froot loops, Nestle Nesquik Chocolate Powder Drink Mix, and also box of rice crispy treats is on the top of their fridge.
• When Freud goes into George’s room we see two Spiderman posters, a wolverine face mug, a black power ranger toy, super soaker, Nintendo 64 and a Voltron toy.
• Judge Reinhold would later go onto play a patriarch named Richard in Beethoven’s 3rd (2000) and Beethoven’s 4th (2001), respectively. Coincidentally, he has a son and daughter in all three movies and a family member named George.
• Some copies of the original DVD were misprinted with an R-rating on the disc label.

Goofs

• Near the 19 minute mark, the fruit bowl has a orange on the viewer’s left view, then the film switches shots to show what the other characters are doing, then once the scene switches shots back to the table with the fruit bowl, the orange is now on the viewer’s right view of the bowl.
• Nick Fuoco is playing with toy cars on the kitchen floor, then Eva Mendes finds his so called frozen thing which he, and Alex D. Linz made. Eva hands him the frozen thing, and then they show a close up shot focused on Scarlett Johansson, when she finishes her dialogue, and they show a zoomed out shot of the kitchen the cars are gone.

Tech specs

• Runtime: 1h 32m(92 min)
• Color: Color