As the film opens, Beaver Cleaver (Cameron Finley) is hatching a scheme to ensure a new bicycle for his birthday. At the encouragement of his brother Wally (Adam Zolotin) and Wally's friend Eddie Haskell (Erik von Detten), the Beav goes out for the football team, with the idea that becoming a jock will impress his father. Soon, though, Beaver's new bike is stolen, he has quit the football team, and he's trying like heck to hide his failures from Dad (Christopher McDonald). Meanwhile, Wally and Eddie are feuding over a girl who thinks the former is dreamy and the latter is a creep.

The episodic story is sweet, with the snappy pace of a sitcom. Besides an innate blandness, the only real problem with the movie is one lingering question: Why? What's this movie's raison d'être? As mentioned, the filmmakers aren't copping an attitude about this material, although Ward's tendency to holler at the boys is blamed on his relationship with his own father. They're also not merely recreating the show. The story is set in the '90s, with knowing bows to Nintendo, Blockbuster, and Nike. In fact, other than June's clothes, the characters' names, Eddie's smugness, and the fact that Beaver says "junk" a lot, the movie makes few references to its TV origins--it could just as easily have been titled Theodore's Football Adventure.

That it's called Leave It to Beaver instead says a lot about the culture we live in. The 1950s may not really have been a simpler time, but at least there were fewer choices as far as entertainment was concerned. Children of the '50s through the '70s had shared experiences--everyone read the same comic books, got excited about the same major sporting events, saw matinees on the same two or three movie screens in town, and watched the same few TV channels. Now there are six different Spider-Man titles on the magazine racks, and the citizens of Nashville ignore their NFL franchise to root for arena football.