I'm not sure if I winced or if I clapped aloud. I have mixed feelings on that bit, hehe. Luckily, the rest of the scene (and film) REALLY worked. I loved her conversations with the bitchy soccer mom.

And god, the actor who played Ronnie was amazing. I felt for him.... sometimes sympathy, sometimes hate. At one moment, I hoped he would find happiness and at the next I wanted to kill him. The performances from his passionate, troubled mother and the nervous date were superb. Man, I felt awful after that post-dinner scene.

The "It's the hunger" speech will probably be Kate Winslet's Oscar nominee clip, I'm assuming.

It best sums up her character, for sure.

It still might be a bit much...

Really engrossing, interesting, acting's great, tone is brilliant (the narration makes it work).

But I don't think the film really ever escapes the thematic mold set forth by numerous films that have already explored suburban unrest. The film is definitely grounded in a much firmer reality than, say, American Beauty, but I don't think it necessarily makes a statement that's any more profound.

I'd have the same opinions regarding the relationships themselves if they were taken out of that suburban context. I really liked the execution but wasn't blown away by anything the film set forth.

B+

****Some Spoilers****

LITTLE CHILDREN - 8/10 (A-)

This would have been much better had it not been for the ending. I found it underwhelming. It was just kind of, "That's it?" The movie was long enough the way it was yet it felt like it could have went on longer and had so much more to say. Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson were great, especially Kate Winslet. Jennifer Connelly is just kind of there, but I did like her during the dinner scene. That was the only time I really liked her performance. And it's not her fault, it's just that she has nothing to do. Jackie Earle Haley's performance is highly overrated. I don't get what's so special about it. I could have done without the pedophile sub-plot. And it's not because it's focused on a pedophile because some movies with the same subject matter work better, but I didn't think it worked as well here. Maybe they should have cut it and focused on the main characters a bit more and put together a better ending. I also didn't like the scene with Wilson's character deciding to get on a skateboard towards the end. It's almost funny how silly it feels. You just know something bad is going to happen. You kind of find it hard to understand how the character could not have figured this as well. Plus I don't like how it seems getting knocked out made him realize he wanted to stay with his wife. I doubt the affair will even stop, which his wife knows about too. I kind of wanted to know what the hell was going to happen. There's no resolve. I definitely wouldn't have wanted it all spelled out for me but I expected better than this. I had no problem with the endings of adult affair-based films like Unfaithful or We Don't Live Here Anymore.

Anyway, before the big letdown of a finale I loved this movie, and I still do but it just dragged it down. I thought the cinematography and atmosphere were great, and surprisingly so was the narration. I wasn't sure how I was going to take to the narration in the beginning because for a while it felt awkward, but eventually it really worked and I ended up loving it. In a mediocre year this reigns as one of the better films I've seen, but it could have been better.

I don't think there was closure at all. Who knows what's going to happen with them. Brad was so intent on taking off with Sarah and then he gets knocked out and that all of a sudden makes him want to be with his wife? I don't think so. I don't think his and Sarah's affair will be over. It wouldn't be easy to just put a stop to something like that. And his wife knows about it, so maybe she'll leave him herself. We don't know what's going to happen, so really there is no closure.

Just my opinion. [spoil]I do think there was closure. This is a coming of age movie. But in this case, the adults are coming of age. Throughout the whole movie, they are acting like little children, hence the title. Sarah is neglecting her daughter and engages in an affair and disregards the effects it may have on her daughter. Brad hates being an adult, being treated as an adult and that is why he dislikes his wife and does not want to take the Bar exam instead watching the skateboarders or playing football. In Sarah, she finds someone who doesn't treat him that way and their affair is for him, something which keeps him from being an adult. In the end, Brad, I think, has no intention to leave his wife. That's why he does not give her the letter, and that is why he is running to Sarah, to see her and tell her that he can't go away with her. Sarah's meeting with Ronnie makes her understand that she's been neglecting her daughter and that she can't run away with Brad. Through all these, the two characters come of age at the end of the movie. Closure.[/spoil]

C+, a mixed bag. The narration was beyond horrible and kills the film. The script was weak with only the excellent acting to salvage it.

I actually enjoyed the narration.

I'm with getluv on this one. The narration was one of the best things about the movie.

Yup.

It was brilliant.

Still ties CoM as the year's best film.

Like andaroo said, the characters, at least on a thematic plane, get where they need to be.

insein-darko has a good interpretation.

There was actually another problem I had with Little Children that I've thought about a little more recently.

And I almost feel bad to say it because she's awesome, and it might just be the script with which I have the problem, but...

Although I love this idea of Sarah being this former student of English lit, this overeducated housewife too smart for suburbia and the little gaggle of mothers who pass the time gawking at a good-looking dad, I don't know if I ever really... bought her as that. Aside from the book club scene in which she obviously purveys some of that infrequently utilized knowledge and articulation, I don't know if I ever once actually felt like Sarah was -- at least from her actions -- a smart person.

Now I know that this is intentional; Sarah is, after all, one of the titular "little children." And the script does throw in a line in the book club scene that caught my attention and might lend itself to reasoning for her character's lack of fortitude (she says she didn't get her Ph.D because she failed to write her dissertation). But otherwise, I think the film fails to actually convey that lack of reasoning on her part. Would Sarah, an intelligent woman, have been so inclined to run off with Brad just because she felt dissatisfied with her cliched, suburban existence? I don't know. I don't think so.

Hope that makes sense. For now, I'm going to blame... the script?

Well, I mean, I think you may have answered your own question.

Sarah's intelligence was obviously there, but she needed some "growing up" to do in the department of emotional maturity and security, which she has apparently done by the end of the film when Brad doesn't meet her in the park.

Okay, okay, I get it! People are damaged goods -- every last one of us stinkin' humans. We're like, you know, Little Children...

Yup - I finally got out to see Todd's new movie. Todd, as in Todd "I fell asleep In the Bedroom" Fields. One things for sure, this guy knows how to drive an intriguing story straight into the ground. Yow! What kinda perverse psyche swerves this vehicle so? And by perverse, I sure as hell don't mean the pedophile character -- I mean the whole freakin' psyche behind why this story is dreamt up and told in this gawd-awful manner.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's lots to like here. The whole set-up of Sarah and Brad's story, the humor (and there's plenty of it, at least until the well went dry at about the 2/3 mark of the film), Kate Winslet's awesome performance (as always)...

But then, the unimaginable strikes, and I mean unimaginable -- the screenplay literally becomes unimaginable. My suspension of disbelief bottomed out so many times in the last half hour of this film, that I wore out my set of shocks.

I haven't entirely given up on Todd-o-vision - this is certainly better than his last outing, but Todd baby, my patience is being severely tested.

3 out of 5.

Honest? Look deeper. Or perhaps shallower...


{BTW: I also enjoyed the narration - it added a lot to the humor.}

Yow! ...and this from a person who appreciated My Summer of Love...

3 out of 5. Who are you kidding???

Speak for yourself!

This is gonna be one of those movies ya watch ten years down the road, and you experience severe embarassment about your initial reaction to it. Sure it has it's good moments, but honestly -- overall it's a freakin' train wreck...

Bradley Witherberry, you liked (nay, loved) Freddy Got Fingered.

If someone said the exact same thing about that movie to you, I bet you'd strongly disagree, even though you are probably the only person on Earth who actually liked that movie.

Well, me and A.O. Scott of the New York Times who also loved it, anyways...

I would step on a mine if I were you Brad.

Little Children is really great - darkly funny, fascinating, with one of the very best ensemble works of the year and weirdly paced sometimes, which somehow makes it more disturbingly real. There were scenes where I laughed and a few seconds later I was emotionally moved by the whole situation... the comedy and drama combo shocked me a little bit, when I didn't know what to do, lol.


The sentence "It gets under your skin" was created for movies like this.



I finally have someone to root for in the Best Supporting Actor category


I need to see it again to set on a grade, but it won't leave my top 10, that's for sure.

Exactly! And that particular narrator reminded me of Barry Lyndon somehow, lol!


I don't see what's wrong with the ending. It's perfect as it is?


Damn it, this movie won't leave me for days, I can feel it... I need to read the book.

I've been in the mood of writing full reviews as of late, I saw this a couple months ago but never really commented on it...

Little Children is Todd Field's follow up to his massive critical success and Best Picture nominated film In the Bedroom, and like that film, it follows the formula of suburbia, its characters, and the guilt and depth that the members of the community show. However, Little Children varies from the first film in that it is much more creepy, private, and guilty.

Little Children centers around a variety of characters. Sarah(Kate Winslet), is a fed-up housewife who wants to break out and strive for something more, and when she takes her kid to the park and meets Brad(Patrick Wilson), combined with walking in on her husband in a certain act of masterbation, her change begins. Brad is a deprived good looking man who has been lowered to stay at home dad status, while his wife(the underused Jennifer Connelly) is off making documentaries for PBS. In the most meaty role of the film, Ronnie(former child star Jackie Earle Haley), plays a man convicted for indecent exposure, but largely suspected by everyone to be a child molester as well. Finally, a former cop(Noel Emmbuaich) has an obsession with stomping all over Ronnie's life, and won't stop until something makes him.

Little Children is very much an ensemble movie, dipping into each of these characters and giving them depth. When Sarah first has her conversation with Brad, it feels casual and real, like these people could really be talking. Throughout the film, the idea of breaking out of your regular shell is toyed with, from Sarah and Brad spending time together in general, to Brad playing football again and trying to skateboard. There is a hint of this in a scene where Sarah, who has a P.H.D. in literature, goes to a book club meeting and explains a book unlike anyone else in the room.

Perhaps the biggest fault of Little Children, is that while it is a very good individual character study, is that sometimes the film can feel icky. It is a very sexual movie, and from multiple scenes of men servicing themselves, to full on sex scenes, sometimes you wonder why Field is choosing to show us as much as he is, at times it feels awkward to be inside some of these characters' most personal moments, like you shouldn't be there. But then again, maybe that's a strength of the film, depending on which way you look at it.

The acting throughout the movie is magnificent. Kate Winslet continues her hot streak, earning another Oscar nomination deservingly. Newcomer Patrick Wilson shines as her counterpart, providing a stable male lead that deserves to be mentioned as one of the breakthrough roles of the year. Jackie Earle Haley returns from once acting as a child star in Bad News Bears, to also receive an Oscar nomination, but while he was very good, his role was so incredibly meaty that I don't think he performed much better than most actors given the opportunity could in the role. Noel Emmbuaich does well as the angry cop, anchoring his role and proving he can act. The screenplay is excellent, the dialogs between the characters are nearly perfect, and the film never lets you go or slows down.

The film also contains a splendid and original addition, a narration that carries out throughout the story, almost making it seem like a child's fable, or a book, from which it is based off of. Without a doubt it added a memorable touch to the film, aiding it greatly.

Todd Field continues to prove that he is a very very capable director, using the suburbia medium to its full advantage. Little Children is a film that I cannot say I have grown to love, as I find it hard to attach to a film with events and characters such as this, however it is useful to be admired. It is a very solid effort by Field, and without a doubt he is setting himself up as one of the directors of this generation to watch in the future.

B+