The Kids Grow Up

Although director Doug Block's excellent previous documentary 51 Birch Street (VL-11/07) managed to make a compellingly universal statement through an intimately personal story about his parents, his latest feels like no more than a thinly conceived home movie. Block has more or less documented his daughter Lucy's entire 17-year existence. Now, as Lucy prepares to leave her parents' NYC apartment for Pomona College, some 3,000 miles away on the West Coast, Block's smothering attachment to his favorite subject grows even greater. Viewers see Lucy evolve from a pre-kindergarten age extrovert who loved seeing herself on film to the present-day teen who's finally cracking under the strain of having to always sacrifice her privacy for her father's cinephilic mania. Block's camera is so intrusive that you wholeheartedly sympathize with Lucy when she finally pleads with her pop to give her a break from the suffocating spotlight. While Block deals with his own inability to let his little girl grow up, his law-professor wife suffers a crippling bout of depression. What soon becomes clear is that The Kids Grow Up is not so much about Lucy as it is about Block's neurotic fear of facing life after she leaves. DVD extras include a “making-of” featurette, and outtakes. An optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (M. Sandlin)