I'll Wave Back Reviews

Although this convoluted father-son drama doesn’t always gel, it contains many affecting moments. Divorced dad John Clairborne (Matt Letscher) tries to be patient with his smart-mouthed son, afraid that he might fall into the harsh parenting patterns of his own disciplinarian father, Billy Joe (Randy Travis). Then John gets a piece of shocking news: His father has died; the shock is that John grew up thinking that his father died when he was ten. So he packs up the car and his son and embarks on a road trip to the Mississippi town where he was born, as well as a private journey through his childhood memories. As a ten-year-old growing up in a rural enclave, John Clairborn — nicknamed John John (Christian Craft) — fantasizes about building his own aircraft. His mother, Sondra (Romy Rosemont), dreams of leaving the stern Billy Joe and moving to San Francisco. Redneck Billy Joe dismisses his wife’s hippie ideals and resents the fact that John John has picked up her starry-eyed attitude. John John’s only friend is brain-damaged neighbor Zeola (Rusty Schwimmer), who helps him search for airplane parts. But when sophisticated city boy Vince Gibbs (Benjamin Orlansky) comes to spend the summer with his grandparents at a nearby farm, John John finds himself feeling embarrassed by Zeola. While Billy sends for mail order blueprints, Zeola continues her quest to build a makeshift flying contraption, with a gentle assist from a retired aerospace engineer. By the time Zeola is ready to test her flying machine, Billy Joe has discovered that Sondra is planning to desert him. Forced to shoot her husband to get away, Sondra leaves town with John John in tow and encourages John John’s belief that his father is dead, when Billy Joe is in fact only wounded. Only as an adult can John confront the troubled childhood that seems to have scarred his adult life and those of the people he and Sondra left behind all those years ago. Co-writer-director Jefferson Davis doesn't entirely succeed in juggle his film's dual time frame and ever-shifting perspectives, but whenever the story settles down in John John’s memories it's a fine evocation of a Delta boyhood that compares favorably with the bittersweet reminiscences of Truman Capote