Simon Birch

(Buena Vista)

"Loosely based" on John Irving's popular novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, Mark Steven Johnson's film traces the fortunes of title character Simon (Ian Smith) and Joe (Joe Mazzello) as they grow up in small-town Maine, circa 1960, where the diminutive 12-year-old Simon is a deeply religious mite whose faith is put to the test when he accidentally kills Joe's mother (Ashley Judd) with a baseball. As flatly maudlin as the premise would suggest, the script does pack some tart zingers.