TIME TRAVEL POSSIBLE AT LAST

Everyone talks about time travel. But do you know something -- it's already happening right here in Chicago. Every night. Sometimes under the stars at Grant Park. Other times on your favorite cable movie channels...!

I understand perfectly well which summer blockbusters sell the best with the kids. Big, splashy, raunchy. But I also understand how the young adult audiences are traveling back in time to watch many of the old movie classics. Why are long-dead Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis attracting so many young audiences? Maybe because the young are looking for something old. As in the old values that filled those black&white screens of the 30's and 40's.

This is not to enter the arena of cinematic critique. We can leave that to others. Instead, this is to try taking the pulse of today's young adults as they get caught up in the dramas and delights of enduring classics like "Chain Gang," "Dark Victory," "Goodbye Mr Chips," "Random Harvest," "Mr Smith Goes to Washington," "Casablanca," "Mrs. Miniver," "Wake Island," "It's A Wonderful Life," and "Battleground".

What makes anything -- from movies to music -- a classic is if it houses values that last. That connect with anyone in any age. This is not the old man's blather about they-don't-make-'em-like-in-my-day! Rather, an invitation to wonder about those human values which were indomitable enough to help a hurting population get through the world's greatest depression followed by the world's greatest war.

Guy gets girl...? OK, that still works today. The clinch in the last reel is the sine qua non of Hollywood. However, there was more at work back then with which today's audiences are connecting, like they do when coming home for the holidays. Rock-solid, old-fashioned stuff rarely portrayed in our more frenetic age of fast money and even faster love.

Let me put this out....

Fast, rich living can dull the appetites for more traditional values. Until, that is, we re-experience them. Such deliciously corny (yet intensely admired) ideas like: The end doesn't justify the means...honest effort yields honest results...right eventually wins over wrong...love does conquer all...good guys finish first.... honor counts...heroes exist...parents matter.

It's true -- today's culture is more informed and less gullible. And yet watch them tear up at the National Anthem on the Fourth, cheer the underdog, admire the good guy, bring flowers to Mom. There's something still ticking inside the hearts of our cynical times that ticks louder whenever it's surprised by one of those supposedly dated old values. Reports of the death of a moral America may be premature. One of the first, faint signs of life can be detected in the way young audiences respond to these old movies.

This is not to say America's young adults are ready to re-live the frothy innocence of the old Mickey-and-Judy movies. And yet you catch the happy gleam in their watching eyes, and you kinda wonder....