Dan Radcliffe in "My Boy Jack"

[Geoff]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

Carol:
> I saw a teeny clip from "My Boy Jack" in which Dan Radcliffe appears as the young Rudyard Kipling (why he's called Jack, I don't know--maybe because Rudyard is such an awful name). All I remember is that someone (his father?) thinks he's old enough to go off to war and that he looks like a young Hitler! Has anyone seen this film and is it worth seeing? Can Dan Radcliffe act well enough that the audience doesn't think of him as Harry Potter with a mustache?

Geoff:
I'm surprised this came up at this particular time because it aired 
again on British TV in November which is its natural spot. It 
premiered in November 2007 because it was part of the 
commemorations that year for Remembrance Day (11 November) 
and was transmitted on Remembrance Sunday which is the nearest 
to the 11th.

Dan said at the time that he wanted to make it a vehicle for his 
own personal acknowledgement for the fallen as he had had a 
grandfather in WWI.

There was some comment on the group at the time and I repeat 
just a couple of things I wrote at the time which might help. If you 
search on "My Boy Jack"you should be able to get into the main 
discussions.

As someone else has commented, Rudyard Kipling's son was John
but John is very often turned into Jack. His father was the Poet 
Laureate and very close to the king and he was a very jingoistic 
speaker. The attitude of the country at the time was that young men 
should go to fight. Jack dearly wanted to go but was so very short-
sighted that he was turned down by about three medical boards
but badgered his father to pull strings to get him into training - 
which he did. He trained on the Western Front and on his first day
after his eighteenth birthday as a commissioned officer, he went 
over the top and was posted missing. Some time later, a colleague
reported to his parents that he had seen him killed. Despite modern
suggestions which have been questioned, his body was never found.

On 08/12/08, I wrote in post 38174: 
I have seen most of his output. I saw "My Boy Jack" last year but
haven't been able to watch the DVD. This is not his fault but the
fact that the story, a true one, was so gut-wrenching that I felt
moved to tears and the "men don't cry" syndrome led me to put
it back on the shelf each time I pick it up. But he did a good job.

I saw him in the London production of "Equus" and was greatly
enthused by the whole production - more than the film version
which I had previously watched.

Apart from Dan's acting ability, something that has impressed
me about so many of the young actors in the HP series - and in
other films involving younger people - is that, in interview, they
nearly all come over as grounded, sensible people with a clear
sense of their strengths and weaknesses. They often have the
knack of being able to laugh at themselves and realise how
fortunate they have been unlike some famous names who acquired
brattishness as they received fan acclaim and lost their charm and
sincerity as a result.

*****

Further to that comment, I did see the BBC "David Copperfield" in 
1999 way before he became known as Harry and was very impressed
by this young guy then. Interestingly, other actors in the production 
included Maggie Smith,  Zoe Wanamaker and Imelda Staunton. This 
has been shown twice in the very recent past and I've missed it. I
really will have to get the DVD!