Little Children

Anyway, I'm sure that Field wants us to see that the world is not black-and-white, good-or-bad, but that so-called "normal" people are quirky individuals after all. The best scene in this regard is Sarah's attendance at a neighborhood book-club meeting, where a group of women are discussing Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." It is both comic and dramatic, with the Flaubert character seeming to mirror Sarah's own dilemma. The book, Sarah tells the group, is about "the hunger for alternatives, and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness." It's a good summing up of one of the movie's primary themes.

However, at the same time Field is building up good will in the audience, he is undermining his own characterizations and ideas. For instance, the movie is far too long (at well over two hours) to maintain its grip on the situation. Once it makes its points, which is early on, the rest is redundant. The movie is also much too talky. There are too many characters taking up too much time. I've already mentioned that its intentions are ambivalent, its main character too pretty, and its narration too peculiar. Moreover, the movie's intended shocking ending is disappointing and seems to belie the very essence of the story.

So, "Little Children" is definitely a movie of contrasts. Perhaps that is just what life is like, but the movie piles it on rather thick. "Little Children" is rated R for sex and nudity.

Video:
The picture looks terrific. From the very outset, one can see that the transfer engineers did their best to preserve every particle of the film's appearance. The movie's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio shows up across my screen at a very wide 2.20:1, and a high bit rate secures rich, deep colors and intense black levels. For a standard-definition DVD, the object delineation is excellent, the overall image is bright and clean, and even nighttime shots display plenty of detail.

Audio:
The audio has little to do, but reproduced in Dolby Digital 5.1, it does it well. There is an evenly balanced tonal range, with signals well spread out among the six speakers. Bass is not particularly deep, but it doesn't need to be. The surrounds come to life during a few crowd scenes, such as at the community pool, and during a brief rain storm. Mostly, though, the film contains dialogue, and here the midrange excels in its quietness, its silence, and its lack of edge or nasality.

Extras:
New Line did not treat the movie to any extras to speak of. I'm not sure why; perhaps it was because while critics loved the film, it did not do well at the box office, and the studio didn't want to spend any more money than they had to on its disc release. Or perhaps the studio felt that the audience for the film would buy it with or without a lot of bonus materials. In other words, the studio isn't try to promote anything here but the movie.

English is the only spoken language involved, but there are English and Spanish subtitles. The folks at New Line animated the twenty-three scene selections, but they did not provide a chapter insert. And the only trailers involved are those that play at start-up, for "The New World," "Prairie Home Companion," and "A History of Violence."

Parting Shots:
The Academy nominated "Little Children" for three Oscars: Best Actress, Kate Winselt; Best Supporting Actor, Jackie Earle Haley; and Best Adapted Screenplay, Todd Field and Tom Perrotta. What's more, the movie received an overwhelmingly positive response from the nation's critics. There is a lot of good in this film.

However, its two most-similar competitors maintained a consistent tone throughout, "In the Bedroom" a serious mood and "American Beauty" a satiric one. "Little Children" tries its hand at doing both and gets into trouble. It is not an exaggeration to say that like its characters, "Little Children" is a funny, confused, enlightening, frustrating, dramatic, pedantic, overly simplistic, yet oddly compelling film. (The "little children" of the title refers not only to the main characters' kids but to the immaturity of the main characters themselves.) It's the kind of movie I admired for its intent while disliking for its ambivalence.

If filmmakers Field and Perrotta had decided just where they wanted their movie to go, they might have given it a chance with a wider audience. As it is, the movie is a flawed work that sparkles only sporadically. Still, when it does come to life, it is fascinating, and that's more than most films can boast.

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