Hiding Out

Starring:Jon Cryer, Keith Coogan, Annabeth Gish, Oliver Cotton, Claude Brooks, Tim Quill, Alexandra Auder, Tony Soper (II), Ned Eisenberg, Marita Geraghty, Steven Small, Johnny Walker (VII), John Spencer, Gretchen Cryer, Anne Pitoniak, Lou Walker, Beth Ehlers, Nancy Fish, Richard Portnow, Gerry Bamman
Director: Bob Giraldi
Studio: Anchor Bay
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Hiding Out - a nostalgic laugh fest from the 80's
:0)
Forgotten 80's ...
Jon Cryer...hot at any age
Hiding Out Is Delightful Despite Lack Of Praise

Hiding Out
Starring: Jon Cryer , Keith Coogan , Annabeth Gish , Oliver Cotton , and Claude Brooks
Director: Bob Giraldi
Manufacturer: Anchor Bay
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00005NKSM
Release Date: 2001-10-09

Customer Reviews:

Hiding Out - a nostalgic laugh fest from the 80's.......2007-05-11

Andrew Morenski (Jon Cryer) is a Wall Street broker in his prime living the good life and making the nice money. That is until the FBI wants him to testify against a mob figure regarding a bogus financial deal. It seems okay until hit men enter the picture and the government protection lets him down. Plan B though finds him hiding out in suburbia with his aunt and cousin and eventually leads him to hiding out back in his cousin's high school of all places. That can't be all bad right?

Wrong. Now it's time for the best laid plans to go right out the window in the funniest ways ever. Maxwell Hauser (nothing like getting your alias from a coffee can) becomes the oldest student ever in high school and he just can't get a break. For someone who's trying to keep a low profile, Maxwell turns out to be an instant success. He hits it off with his cousin's friends who want him to run for student body president. Then there are the obnoxious teachers who he happens to be smarter than and he shows them up. And finally, he has to experience teen dating and romance all over again without falling flat on his face. Did I mention he also has to counsel his nerdy cousin on half a dozen different things? Oh, and this while always trying to avoid mafia assassins. High School goes haywire, that's good fun.

The acting in `Hiding Out' is really good and with Jon Cryer being the focal character, he does a great job. Annabeth Gish was good too as his love interest and I couldn't believe I didn't see her in anything else until season nine of the X-Files. Go figure. As far as the plot goes, it's a solid story with good doses of humor throughout and an exciting ending. If you're a fan of 80's movies like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club, you'll get a kick out this too. This is recommended viewing.

:0).......2006-06-17

I LOVE 80's movie and this is one of my fav....Jon Cryer did a great job in this movie..

Hiding out in a school attenting the school when he is way over age ...It was just great...

Forgotten 80's ..........2005-10-11

Hiding Out has been hiding out from the funny 80's teen flicks. It has been lost in between the Brat Pack and John Hughes finest, but it is just as corny/funny as the rest of them. Jon Cryer plays Andrew a stockbroker running for his life from the mob and the feds who are attempting to protect him. After narrowly escaping from the Mob, Andrew assumes a new identity in a new town. What is not planned ahead is the fact that he will be a high-schooler again.

The interactions with teachers, fellow students, love interests, and his dorky cousin Patrick make this movie quality for the genre it belongs in.

Good soundtrack and memorable quotes round out this lost flick.

Jon Cryer...hot at any age.......2005-07-19

This movie was cute back in the 80's and it still is today. Jon Cryer is wonderfully charming and Annabeth Gish is one lucky girl. Keith Coogan is funny as always. One for the collection.

Hiding Out Is Delightful Despite Lack Of Praise.......2005-04-07

I can't say enough about this movie. It's clearly, one of the most underated movies of the 80's. And sadly it was considered one of his worst movies (along with many others) by pretty much every critic. Umm... ok. It rarely airs and not many people have seen it before. Like the viewer before me said, it needs to be re-released.I've enjoyed this movie on Vhs for years (13 years to be exact) and have finally just gotten it on dvd. With his talent he deserved alot more than he got out of his acting career. In my opinion Hollywood is and always will be overated. Bring back some people who can act!! He's great on his show but I'd love to see him in more main stream movies. And hell, I don't care if they tank I'll watch them anway!! How can you not love Jon's quirky yet enjoyable acting style. And those cute dimples of his !!! (yeah I'm a girl can't help it) Give this movie a chance you'll love it, if you don't something is seriously wrong with you. =) (22 year old viewer).

Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust

Average customer rating:

Jewish Faith and Jewish Tolerance examined
Deeply Moving Part of an Ongoing Dialogue
Some Progress in Polish-Jewish Relations, But...
Documentaries don't usually make you cry!
inspiring documentary

Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust
Starring: Akiva Daum , Menachem Daum , Rifka Daum , Tzvi Dovid Daum , and Honorata Matuszezyk Mucha
Director: Menachem Daum , and Oren Rudavsky
Manufacturer: First Run Features
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: B00067BBQY
Release Date: 2004-12-14

Description

This award winning film by the director of A LIFE APART tells the emotional and dramatic story of a Jewish father who journeys with his two ultra-conservative orthodox sons back to Poland to try and find the Christian farmers who hid his family from the Nazis. His hope is to instill in his insulated and narrow minded sons the power of interfaith tolerance and trust. DVD BONUSES ;Directors Q&A in Jerusalem,U.S. and Poland ; photo gallery, biographies . WINNER:GRAND PRIX:N.American Interfaith Film Festival ; WINNER: GRAND PRIX:Warsaw Intl Jewish Film Festival. 85 mins. color

Customer Reviews:

Jewish Faith and Jewish Tolerance examined.......2006-07-25

This is a documentary about an Orthodox Jewish father (the director), who is disturbed by anti non-Semitic views held by his sons and many people of his religion. To impart tolerance, the director brings his wife and sons to Poland to find the people who saved his father's life during the holocaust. The director and his family find an elderly woman and man who hid their father and two other Jewish men during the holocaust. The Polish farmers said they did it because they pitied the men. The old woman and man were happy to meet their Jewish guests, but wondered why none of the men who's lives they saved, sent a post card to say thank you.

There are scenes in the documentary showing a synagogue that was destroyed during the war and the disrepair of a cemetery where many Jewish people are buried. Yet as other reviewers of this documentary have pointed out, none of these images are placed in any kind of context concerning what the nation of Poland and allof its people went through during the war. Not only were synagogues destroyed but entire cities in Poland, including Warsaw, were completely burned to the ground.

As I had hoped, during the film, I saw a natural progression of tolerance by the director's sons toward non-Jews. Unfortunately one of the last statements made by one of the director's sons, is that the experience taught him that a "few" gentiles can be good although most are not. I found this comment very disturbing given most Poles, Americans, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims would not need such a profound experience to gain an understanding that other people besides themselves can be good. These grown men even asked their grandfather if he would have
saves a Pole's life if the situation had been reversed. He responded by saying no, since the act of hiding Jews was punishable by death. Are the young men in this film saying that to be a good Gentile you need to follow a moral standard which they themselves are not expected to follow?

I also wondered what Orthodox Jews are doing today to help others who find themselves in the same predicament that they were in during the holocaust. Do they rise to arms and place adequate political, financial, and military pressure on African dictatorships in Darfur or Rwanda? Have they ever stretched beyond their own persecution to protect people who are experiencing discrimination or genocide?

I know that despite a person's religion or race the answer is that most people care about the welfare of others. It is disappointing that the Director's sons do not seem to have drawn the same conclusion.

Deeply Moving Part of an Ongoing Dialogue.......2006-06-01

I dreaded watching yet another film that would, predictably, open with a pan of rolling Polish countryside, show an elderly peasant, clueless about why he is being filmed, shot in such a way as to make him appear threatening or simply primitive, and hear a indignant voiceover about Poland's "Dark, shameful secrets." Then I would squirm as genuine facts were presented in twisted contexts in order to distort history.

"Hiding and Seeking" is not that anti-Polonist film; it is not Marian Marzynski's "Shtetl," it is not Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah."

The film opens with Menachem Daum, a Jewish American father, playing, for his devout Jewish sons now living in Israel, a recording of a Jewish sermon in which the speaker encourages his hearers to cultivate hostility toward non-Jews.

His sons do not take an unambiguous stance against hatred. Rather, one, especially, struggles to justify prejudice.

Moments like this are always darkly amusing for me as a woman viewer. Every second of every day, men violate, torture, murder, enslave, and commit even more unspeakable crimes against women, and have done so for thousands of years. I wonder how the younger Mr. Daum would feel if I tried to justify hatred of men to his wife or daughter?

I adduce this absurd example merely to highlight: hatred is NEVER moral. Hatred is NEVER justified. Hatred is always a sin and an intellectual failure.

Menachem Daum reports that he grew up with the idea of Poles as the ultimate other, utterly beyond redemption.

The older Mr. Daum takes his sons to Poland. There he insists on leaving prayers at the site of a lost synagogue. One of his sons, especially, speaks openly of how foolish he finds such behavior. He sees no important Jewish heritage in Poland, the land of the evil other.

Mr. Daum points out to his sons that, were it not for Polish Catholics, they would never have come to be. Their grandfather was saved by Polish Catholics during WW II, who hid three Jewish brothers in their barn.

The family visits the Polish saviors, some of whom are still alive. Apparently no warning was given to the Polish family. A van just drives up and a bunch of strangers with a camera pour out. These Polish farmers are gracious and hospitable. They have a pointed question, though. Why, after they risked their lives, and perhaps the life of the village (Nazis often committed retaliatory massacres against entire villages), did the Jews they saved never contact them? "Even just a post card?"

It's an awkward moment. How do you thank people who saved your life under such circumstances? You can't. So, you delay writing the letter, and then you feel ashamed, and then you never write it. Or, perhaps they never wrote because they were afraid of being asked for monetary compensation. Or, as one of the sons points out, perhaps the saved Jews delayed because their experience of being hidden was so traumatic for them that they were no longer "normal." Or, perhaps they delayed because their saviors were, after all, Poles. The ultimate other.

Time passes, and there are new, and deeply moving, developments, which you will see when you watch the film.

The scenes in Poland communicate much: the looks of contempt, hostility, and fear on some of the faces of the Daums, and, then, as the story progresses, looks of thoughtful reflection, and then affection and ease.

Menachim Daum emerges as a towering figure. He is saintlike in his insistence on the full humanity of all persons, regardless of their religion.

In short, I really loved this movie.

And ... yet.

And yet.

Though the film superficially rejects the idea of Poles as others, the film itself treats Poles as others.

The Polish, non-Jewish experience during WW II is not mentioned. The millions of non-Jewish Poles killed in random mass executions, deported, tortured, gassed, experimented on, enslaved.

The Polish churches, museums, and other cultural artifacts deliberately and methodically destroyed by the Nazis.

The fact that Poland was just out from under a lengthy and destructive period of colonization when it was attacked by Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, simultaneously. That after the war, when many Jews were -- horrifically -- murdered by Polish non-Jews, as this film points out, there was a civil war, in which Jews also did kill non-Jewish Poles, and Poles killed Poles, etc.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

*Nothing* excuses any act of anti-Semitism any Pole has committed against any Jew. All decent Poles are ashamed of, and work to eliminate, such acts, and they do so as part of a proud tradition stretching back centuries. But we can't understand atrocities until we see them in context, and "Hiding and Seeking" doesn't even hint at that context.

One guesses that the filmmakers, who don't speak Polish, are not even aware of the context.

"Hiding and Seeking" shows Jews as the sole initiators of Polish-Jewish dialogue and reconciliation. This is simply inaccurate. Poles like Wladyslaw Bartoszewski faced prison terms under the Communists for working on better Polish-Jewish relations.

Too, Poles are others in this film. The camera never rests on them exclusively.

Just one example. One of the rescuers, an elderly woman, now lives her entire life bent double. Why? The movie never asks this terribly simple question, that, if you were curious, at all, about this woman's full humanity, you'd want answered.

As the film says, there are some "good goyim." But that schema, that insistence on seeing non-Jews as either "good goyim" or "bad goyim," that is, as seeing non-Jews exclusively as entities in relation to Jews, and missing something so obvious as a disease that turned a woman's body into a walking pretzel, misses the full humanity of anyone who is not Jewish.

Some Progress in Polish-Jewish Relations, But..........2005-09-07

Without a doubt, this film is much better than the usual anti-Polish films (e. g., Lanzmann's SHOAH, Marzynski's SHTETL) aired previously by PBS (the Public Broadcasting System). While it is gratifying to see, as the film unfolds, a moving away from the demonization of Poles and an appreciation of Polish efforts to rescue Jews, one is nevertheless struck by the depth of Polonophobic sentiment held by some sectors of the Jewish population. It is actually suggested that, if any people are beyond redemption, it is the Poles. Really? I thought that it was the Germans, as embodied by the Nazis, who planned and implemented the Holocaust. Polish contributions to the Holocaust, Jedwabne and the like notwithstanding, were negligible. Whatever wrong Poles did to Jews was trivial compared to what the Germans did to the Jews. One is therefore mystified as to why Jewish anger towards past wrongs continues to be strongly displaced from Germans unto Poles. Is it political?

There is also a veiled anti-Christian reference in the film when it is mentioned that Jews had been persecuted by "others" for 1,900 years. In actuality, Jews had been persecuted long before that. Remember the attempted genocide of Jews at the time of Queen Esther, centuries before Christianity?

While an elderly hunch-backed Polish woman is shown as a rescuer of Jews, it is not mentioned that more Poles are honored at Yad Vashem for the rescue of Jews than members of any other nationality. And no attempt is made by the film to gauge the numbers of Poles who aided Jews but who were never honored at Yad Vashem. The film correctly notes that there was a death penalty imposed on Poles by the Germans for any aid given to Jews. But no mention is made of the fact that sometimes entire Polish villages were destroyed by the Germans in reprisal for a single family's assistance to Jews. The suspicion shown by the Polish neighbor towards the Polish woman who was in the act of aiding the Jews thus finds ready explanation. He probably was not thrilled at the prospect of losing his life along with the rescuers of Jews if the Germans found them, which they almost did.

The film shows the desecration of the old Jewish cemetery without any contextualization, and the uninformed viewer is led to believe that it was an anti-Jewish act. But was it? In fact, it was common for the Communist authorities (which, BTW, the Poles had never chosen in legitimate elections) to convert unused cemeteries into such things as garbage dumps, and to allow neglect and vandalism to take its toll. That happened to not only the Jewish cemetery shown in the film, but also to Polish ones found on the territories seized by the Soviet Union, notably the Lyczakow Cemetery in Lwow (Lviv, Lvov). The film also has a scene of human bones sticking out of walls of what had once been the Jewish cemetery. The obvious implication is that the local Poles had dug out parts of the Jewish cemetery. Did they? It is more likely that the Communist mismanagement of the lands, common throughout the Soviet empire, had caused an acceleration of natural erosion, thus unearthing the cemetery.

For all its advances over previous treatments of Poles and Jews, the film remains firmly within the Judeocentric (Judaeocentric) paradigm of Holocaust materials. There is not so much as a hint of the privations suffered by the Poles in the hands of the Germans: The hundreds of burned Polish villages, the 2-3 million murdered Poles (including roughly half of the entire Polish intelligentsia), the systematic destruction of objects of Polish culture, the planned eventual extermination of much of the Slavic peoples, etc. The growing interest in Polish Jews by increasing segments of the Polish society, as shown by this film, calls for some reciprocity from the Jewish side. Perhaps one day educational materials used in the US will portray the deaths of millions of Jews, Poles, Belorussians, and Ukrainians with equal attention to all the victimized nationalities that had lost millions of citizens to the murderous Nazi German death machine. THAT would be the real breakthrough in Polish-Jewish relations.

Documentaries don't usually make you cry!.......2005-05-13

Documentaries usually are designed to make you think. This one makes you think AND feel. It starts with the protagonist, Menachem Daum lamenting that religion in general is in danger of being taken over by hate-filled extremists. We find that Daum's two sons are Yeshiva students who have no particular desire to associate with those who aren't Jewish.`Perhaps, through their grandfather, perhaps, through their studies, they've developed the mindset that non-Jews are basically dangerous and that it's best to erect a barrier between them. This is a journey as father reunites his children with the Polish couple who risked their lives to save the children's grandfather and uncles.

The story drags in part, but press on. The end more than accommodates the lack of professional editing, and it has a few life lessons.

inspiring documentary.......2005-02-11

The powerful and moving documentary "Hiding and Seeking" gets to the heart of what religion and faith are really all about.

Menachem Daum, although himself an orthodox Jew, is concerned that his two even more conservative sons - yeshiva students living in Israel - are becoming isolationist in their attitudes towards the gentile world. To prove to them that there are good gentiles in the world, he takes them and his wife on a trip to Poland to have them meet the people who risked their lives by hiding the boys' maternal grandfather and two uncles from the Nazis during World War II. In fact, the boys and their mother owe their very existence to the extraordinary compassion and heroism of this "goyim" family. Although Daum was raised to see virtually all non-Jews as enemies, his life experience has taught him that people are people and that good and evil do not break down along sectarian lines. It is this humanistic philosophy that Daum hopes to impart to his sons.

The "hiding" of the title - beyond the obvious reference to the secretion of Jews during the holocaust - denotes what the practitioners of all religions do when they see themselves as somehow separate from and superior to those around them, and, as a result, build up barriers between their own kind and the outside world. This attitude creates divisions that, paradoxically, end up destroying the very people they are designed to protect. The "seeking" comes in Daum's epic quest to prove to his children that all people have the potential for goodness if only they choose to act upon it. Daum's egalitarian spirit and implicit faith in human goodness - despite having himself grown up in the shadow of the holocaust - provide the inspirational beacon than shines forth from the film.

Near the end of the movie, the Daums finally get to meet two of the people who risked their lives to save the family`s relatives. The encounter is profoundly moving and compelling, and even Daum's sons seem transformed by the experience. But are they? "Hiding and Seeking" may be a "feel good" experience, but it isn't a fairy tale, and directors Baum and Oren Rudavsky are not afraid to end on an ambiguous note. Life, we are led to believe, asks a heck of a lot more complicated questions than an 84-minute movie - even a very good 84-minute movie - can answer. Not bad for a film in what is usually a know-it-all genre.

Filled with laughter and tears as well as a profound insight into the human condition, "Hiding and Seeking" is a rewarding and enlightening film.

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