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Capsule review: ‘My Run’

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Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2009 > October > 22 > Entry

By Chris Garcia | Thursday, October 22, 2009, 11:44 AM

In this well-meaning if underwhelming documentary, Terry Hitchcock, a single father of three children, decides to promote the hardships of single-parenting by nearly killing himself. At 56, Hitchcock is in lousy shape, but he still thinks it’s a good idea to run 2,000 miles from his home in Minneapolis to Atlanta in 75 days, which amounts to about one marathon a day for two and a half months straight. The rub: Hitchcock is no runner.

This is down-home stuff — quixotic, nice, corny — and director Tim VandeSteeg kneads Hitchcock’s 1996 ailment-wracked journey for the kind of uncomplicated uplift and facile feel-goodism that film festival audiences eat up.

Hitchcock’s one-man cause is never very clear (raising awareness for single parents and their children, using the slogan “Children Are Forever”?) and his story, as told here, is little more than a gathering of minor incidents providing whispers of drama, mostly in the realm of stress fractures and chest pains. (Will he make it? Of course he will.)

Hitchcock, a naturally humble presence with a frosty beard, ruddy face and stout determination, jogs and shambles and walks breathlessly, while the movie, with similar breathlessness, gropes for larger significance.

Yet in the end it’s not clear what Hitchcock actually accomplished for the single-parenting cause, and the success of his feat remains an insular triumph.

“My Run” screens Friday night at 9:30 and 9: 15 p.m. Monday at the Rollins Theater.

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