Little Children is another one of those films that I probably wouldn’t have bothered to watch had it not been for the Oscar nominations and subsequent buzz the movie generated. This 2006 adaptation of Tom Perotta’s critically acclaimed novel of the same name was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and stars Kate Winslet and Jackie Earle Haley earned nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. Of course Oscar nominations don’t automatically guarantee that I’ll enjoy a particular film, and unfortunately, that was the case here with Little Children.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The main plot of Little Children focuses on a suburban housewife named Sarah Pierce (played by Winslet). Sarah has a Master’s degree in English literature, but is currently a stay-at-home mom providing care for her young daughter Lucy (Sadie Goldstein).
Sarah does the things that most suburban moms do: she takes her daughter to the park nearly every day and engages in neighborhood gossip with the other mothers. Sarah loathes this ritual because of the constant judging and the condescending attitudes the other moms adopt, but she goes through with it for the sake of appearances.
One day at the park, the other mothers cajole Sarah into striking up a conversation with a stay-at-home dad who comes by often with his son. The women have dubbed the man “The Prom King” because of his looks, but none have ever talked to him so they don’t know anything about him.
Sarah goes over to push Lucy in the swings next to the Prom King and his son. She starts talking to him and discovers that his name is Brad (Patrick Wilson). They actually hit it off, and Sarah is immediately attracted to the man. On a whim, Sarah decides to give the other women something to talk about. She asks Brad to hug her, and then to kiss her. The plan works, as the moms quickly round up their children and leave.
We then get glimpses of Sarah and Brad’s home lives. Sarah is married to a man (Gregg Edelman) who would rather masturbate to pictures on the Internet than pay attention to her, while Brad is married to a woman (Jennifer Connelly) who creates PBS-like documentaries and has a certain knack for emasculating her husband (not letting him have a cell phone, forcing him to cancel magazine subscriptions). We also learn that Brad has a law degree but has failed the bar exam twice. He’s currently supposed to be studying for his third attempt.
After a while, Sarah and Brad start up an affair. They meet at the pool nearly every single day, and then go back to Sarah’s house to have sex while their kids are napping. This goes on for a while until Sarah decides that she wants something more. She persuades Brad to leave his wife so they can run off together, which Brad agrees to. But a couple of things happen to get in their way, and they eventually go back to their unsatisfying lives.
A running subplot of the film involves a convicted sex offender named Ronnie McGorvey (Haley) who is trying to have a life despite being constantly harassed by Larry Hedges (Noah Emmerich), an ex-cop who has nothing better to do with his free time. I thought the subplot would somehow end up being connected to the main plot, but it didn’t.
My Reaction: I have mixed feelings about Little Children. On the one hand, I thought the film provided several scenes that contained sharp insight into the utter boredom and craving for “something more” that many women (and men) can feel in the early years of marriage. There was some smart dialog along the way, and the acting was superb. Kate Winslet in particular did a wonderful job of communicating her Madame Bovary-like afflictions; it seemed that everything her character felt was so real.
Even so, I had a difficult time forming an attachment to the main characters and therefore didn’t care what happened to them. Brad was a bit annoying in how he couldn’t make a decision, so I couldn’t figure out what Sarah saw in him (besides the fact that he was good-looking).
Moreover, I didn’t like how the screenplay conveniently dispatched with Sarah’s husband. We get one substantial scene of him acting like a perv and after that, we’re supposed to forget that he even exists? Would it have been too much trouble to have another scene of Sarah telling him off or flaunting her affair? Something, anything to acknowledge what was going on in that household.
Another scene I didn’t like was the dinner with Richard, Sarah, Brad, and Kathy. Why is it that people in movies can’t behave normally when it’s important to do so? Is it so impossible to get through a couple of hours without letting on that you’re having an affair with someone in the room? Like Sarah would really get all possessive with that, “You never told me about that” line to Brad or that she would refer to her and Brad as “we.” Granted, I didn’t read the book, so I suppose this could have been a deliberate attempt on Sarah’s part to sabotage Brad and Kathy’s marriage. But the way it played out on screen was just ridiculous.
And I’ll admit it: I didn’t “get” the whole sex offender storyline. Why was that even in the film at all? Were we supposed to feel sorry for Ronnie because of the way people treated him? I didn’t. Not one bit. So again, what was the point there? It probably would have been a tighter, more consistent movie without that subplot to begin with.
So, yeah, like I said before, I had mixed feelings about Little Children as a whole. Based on these feelings and the fact that I probably wouldn’t want to sit through the whole film again, I’m going to go ahead and give it 5.5 stars. Others may like this kind of thing, but it just wasn’t for me.
I just realized that it’s been about six weeks since I’ve posted an update about how Season 3 of Lost is going. Back then, I had only watched the first four episodes, and wasn’t really that optimistic about what any of the subsequent eps would have to offer. But I continued slogging through, and as a result, am now caught up through 3×13, which means there are just 10 eps left in the season. Here are my thoughts on what’s been happening so far.