Customer Reviews

Josh & Sam [VHS]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a story about two boys whose parents are separating, and how they handle it. Josh (Jacob Tierney) is the smarter, but less athletic of the two, and his father displays a genuine disappointment in everything he does. Sam (Noah Fleiss) is the younger of the two. He's just failed second grade, and is not doing well in summer school. While he is athletic and physically inclined, he's also a gullable little kid. With a little creative computer work Josh convinces Sam that he's a S.A.M. (Strategically Altered Mutant), created by the government, and that his mother is selling him to the Pentagon and using the money to go off to Europe! The adventure begins when the boys run, er, drive away from home. Their travels take them on a wild route to Canada, and along the way the meet up with the Liberty Maid, a character whom Josh also made up, but who is nonetheless quite willing to play along (but the joke's on Josh). Throw in a couple mean brothers and a persistent sheriff, and you've got some rather plausible fiction that makes a great movie!

Josh and Sam is just one of those kinda movies, who can forget Surf Ninja's and Airborne? It's one of those movies you start out watching on a friday night while your wondering "what in the heck am i doing with my life?" However you find yourself pulled into this story of how 2 brothers cope with their mother flying off to Europe with her Rico Suavea boyfriend and to make matters worse she hasn't even invited you along! You have to go live with your father in Florida with his new wife and her 2 boys. To make a short but hard to describe story shorter, Josh sees that his brother Sam is favoring his new stepbrothers and giving him the cold shoulder. So he goes on his dad's computer prints up some official looking documents and convinces his brother that the real reason he can't get good grades at school, why he's so good at football and why he gets in fights at recess is because he's S.A.M. an acronym for Strategically Altered Mutant . He concvinces Sam that everyone is in on it but him and his mother father and stepbrothers want to send him off to a secret war in Africa and collect money from the Pentagon. Nevertheless when they 2 amigos have to go back to California to pack up their stuff they are delayed in Dallas. Josh uses this as a chance to runaway but finds he can't get very far without Sam. They steal a drunk's car and head for Canada where Sam believes he will be safe from the Pentagon. Along the way they meet up with my girl Martha Plimpton who Sam believes is the Liberty Maid come to lead him to Canada on the Underground Roadway! What else can i say, a candle apple red 1993 pontiac Grand Prix, the open backway western roads and your heading towards Canada and an uncertain future. Josh and Sam is a great film which unfortunately has not been discovered by many people.

After hearing the music selections of "Josh and S.A.M." three times, I've concluded that I'm happy I bought the CD. I hadn't heard the music since seeing the film about 1995. At that time I thought it worked very well in a relatively mediocre film. Being a fan of most of Thomas Newman's scores, I hear a lot of the composer's usual tricks at work here. There's the funky, twangy sounds mixed with electronic sounds with the overlaying strings and woodwinds. No other composer has this signiture sound, and if you like it, it'll hook you. The "Main Title" has a nice little melody played in either an English horn or oboe. This tune only appears in two other sections. It's the soulful-sounding strings in "Saltwater Palace, Bus to Canada, and Targhee Pass," for example that I really liked. It's this kind of poignant stuff that Newman can do so well. I give this soundtrack 4 stars. It's not "The Shawshank Redemption" nor "Oscar and Lucinda" but still pretty enjoyable, especially if you like most of Newman's music. In my opinion, he's the most gifted composer working in Hollywood today.

I found this CD at a local music store and I picked it up as soon as I found it. I remembered that I really did like the score in the movie. It is very different and unique. I really love it. It is one of my favorites in my soundtrack collection!

This score was beautifully composed, the songs have the ability to actually make you feel cold and alone and bring you back to the light of the world again. I have seen the movie Josh and SAM at least 50 times, i even got a tape recorder once so i could capture some of the music on cassette! That was before i realized the power of the internet and found the entire score on cd! Amazon really does have everything, buy this cd now and you will NOT regret it.

This sountrack by Thomas Newman is a unique excellent score that is very much overlooked. It fits the movie so well that the soundtrack by itself can't be truly appreciated without watching the movie. I would highly suggest buying this Varese C.D.!!

Josh (Tierney) is unhappy with the way that his family treats him, especially the fact that his father (Tobolowsky) seems to love little brother Sam (Fleiss) more. To get even, he tells Sam that Sam is a robot, and the family is going to sell him to the Pentagon to fight in wars. The boys end up on the run, Sam from the Pentagon and Josh from the police (he thinks that he murdered someone). The Liberty Maid (Plimpton) arrives and helps them for awhile, but then the boys are on their own. Well acted fun!

"Product Details
One-of-a-kind alien invasion sci-fi featuring blood drinking alien clowns harvesting a small city."

Someone correct this completely untrue synopsis.

I'm so glad that amazon made an online-viewing version of this movie because it's only sold on VHS. Will someone please change the movie description though (what the heck)? Not many people seem to know about this movie but it is very touching with a little bit of humor. <3

Josh and S.A.M. is one of my favorite movies. Having worked with kids
much of my adult life, I am sensitive to the problems children have in
dysfunctional or rejecting families. The film is about two brothers,
Josh and Sam (Jacob Tierney and Noah Fleiss) ages 12 and 8 respectively.
(Fleiss should have been cast as a 9 or 10 year old). They are complete
opposites, the older a computer nerd and fabricator, the younger a jock
with ADD symptoms. They do not get along, with Josh resenting Sam's
athleticism and Sam smarting from Josh's scorn. Their mother is a
divorcee, more involved in her new love interest than her boys, while
their father has remarried and is living in Florida with his new wife
and her two cloddish jock sons, appearing to be about 11 and 14. The
boys are flown from L.A. to Florida to visit their dad before summer
ends, and there, Josh's stepbrothers and Sam tease Josh, implying that
his dad thinks maybe he is gay. Upset that Sam sides with his step-
brothers, he concocts a plan on a computer, combining a weekly news-
magazine article about child warriors in Latin America with pictures
of Sam. He then manages to convince Sam the next day that he (Sam) is
really genetically engineered to be a child warrior, and that his dad
is planning to sell him to the Pentagon. This seemingly hard to belive
story seems to explain all of Sam's problems with school, fighting, and
daydreaming. Then the boys are sent back to L.A. prematurely when their
mother decides to go with her boyfriend to Europe for a year and wants
to say goodby before she leaves. But a storm in Dallas grounds their
plane and Josh decides he doesn't want to be with either parent, and
tries to leave Sam at the hotel they are in, waiting out the storm. He
wanders into a high-school reunion to get free food, and pretends he is
the son of a woman attending. A man (Chris Penn) overhears him and
thinks Josh may be his son. Sam comes down from the room, and the three
of them head to the parents of the woman Josh said was his mother. When
Penn realizes the whole story was made up, now inside the unoccupied
residence around a pool table, he becomes violent, and Josh hits him
hard with a pool cue, knocking him out. Josh thinks he has killed Penn,
and he and Sam take off in Penn's rented car for Canada. The rest of
the film is their adventures on the road, which include Martha Plimpton
as a wandering runaway, who S.A.M. believes is the Liberty Maid, part of
the lie that Josh made up to escort altered mutants to freedom in Canada.
No matter how hard Josh tries to tell Sam the truth, each event seems to
only verify Josh's lies. The performances of the two leads are amazing,
the movie is low key, quiet, and sad, making it too heady for younger
children, and a couple of scenes where Sam drives, thinking he is in-
destructible, seriously hurt the films already unlikely premise. But
the last 15 minutes have some excellent dialogue, and the movie ends
in a somewhat promising way, as the brothers have grown close as a result
of their saga. So if you like serious films about children, and can
accept the premise and excuse a couple of poorly thought out scenes,
you will see a terrific, sensitive, beautifully acted, underrated film.