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Ah, the follies of youth. Fighting with siblings, complaining about chores and running away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Wait, one of these things might be unlike the other and just doesn’t belong. Someone get one of those damned muppets in here to figure it out because I want answers and I want them yesterday.
This episode focuses on the novel “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” which was adapted into the, thankfully, succinctly titled “The Hideaways”. The book features a pair of siblings that decide to run away from home because they’re tired and want an adventure. The film adaptation features a couple of whiny brats who run away because someone pissed in their cereal.
If this were a modern day Pulitzer winner, the characters would have no names and they would learn very rough lessons at the hands of herpes ridden, chapped hobo hands in an alley. Instead, we’re treated to children surviving in New York on pocket change and hiding from security guards who were hired because they bring their own blinders to the job.
The novel is easily classified as superior and not just for the trimmings which must occur. It’s almost solely on the shoulders of the director who casts Ingrid Bergman as the dowager. Being as she was older but not nearly old enough to play the character, they slammed her face into spirit gum and then a latex mask of her own face. She’s also wearing the same wig Christopher Walken would don in Batman Returns and giving Don King future inspiration for a haircut.
