Little Children.

MMM! So I heard you like awkward titles. Sure gonna be fun searching on google images for 'little children'....

It’s almost become part of my style to open every review with a rationale for its existence but this time…I’ve got nothing. This film is neither topical nor particularly bad or good to the point where I can really rant on it. Hell this film is so complex and multi layered even trying to tackle a review of this is torture for me…so, why? I…don’t know. It’s 6 o'clock in the morning (at the time of writing) and I haven’t eaten or slept properly for a few days, yeah that’s my excuse! 

In the same vein of Remember Me this film has so much going on it’s incredibly hard to summarise, perhaps even harder because so much goes on in this film to the point where it seems like a patchwork of ideas loosely stuck together to the point of almost no coherence at all. In places it’s downright hilarious, others awkward, sometimes creepy, sometimes horrifying, sometimes sexy and sometimes downright unsettling and then others, downright fucking weird and seemingly purposeless. It tackles lots of moral ethics and ends in probably the ‘correct’ way but with the way the rest of the film has played out, you really question of its a ‘good’ (in terms of good and evil) ending. For the sake of a review, there is a sex offender who moves into a quiet suburb and he anchors a centre for a story about a cop with a dark past, the fantasies of married women and the fleeting moments of youth which constantly tries to challenge any views you have on the world. To the point where you’re mind fucked at the kinds of things you find yourself thinking.

So erm, where to start? I guess the sexual offender. The sexual offender is almost immediately placed in a position in which we sympathise with him, which I found deeply unsettling. We’re told he never actually touched a child, just indecently exposed himself to them. We then see the suburb ‘irrationally’ (questionably) react to him. But then, just when the film seems to be trying so hard to convince us he isn’t so bad just misunderstood we get a scene in a car where after a date he furiously masturbates over the girl he went on a date with after leading her somewhere secluded, while threatening her if she told anyone. Huuuuuuuuh?! You’ve just spent like an hour of your running time trying to make me feel sorry for this guy and you throw that at me? Movie, what the fuck are you doing? You were so close to convincing me. And that's a damn hard thing to do for a fella like me. Then his Mum died, which I found hard because of personal experience but I still didn’t give a shit about him and eventually castrates himself (an ongoing ‘joke’ is the characters ‘irrationally’ claiming he should be castrated) when his Mother leaves him a note ‘be a good boy’ and although this leaves a taste on your tongue like metal by this point I really don’t give a shit about him and we never actually know if he survives either. So I care even less.

Now the cop, I won’t give away his past, but he’s another character I don’t give a shit about. I thought it’d be much better for the movie to make us love this guy, then we learn of his past and feel disgusted with ourselves but nope, this guy proves to be an asshole throughout and when it’s trying to sell to us he’s all broken up (‘post traumatic stress disorder’), I could honestly care less and his final moments of heroics after everything he’s done on and offscreen is just bullshit. Who gives a shit about this guy? You don’t even redeem yourself because we have no idea if the sex offender even survives. Pointless, fucking, scene.

Then there is our main story, an affair. Not only does this main story not quite fit with everything else but it’s shown in such a messy way that I don’t really get the point of this piece of narrative at all. Except to see some really intense sex scenes with Kate Winslett and to see her naked breasts, OH WAIT! I do know the point, what a crock…

So all this different things I mentioned in the summary, give us an example of what you mean! Okay sure, audience in my head.

There’s this weird subplot that Kate Winslett’s character’s husband becomes obsessed with a girl on the internet who takes nude photos of herself. At one point Kate’s character walks in on him masturbating, sniffing a pair of ladies underwear he has on his head. Weird? Very. Meaning to the rest of the movie? Well you could argue she uses this as a reason to have an affair but she’d already cheated on him by this point so really I’m inclined to say none.

The sex offender goes on a date with a girl who he meets through a lonely persons column in the paper, she is totally odd, having two nervous breakdowns she explains and being on a wide range of medication. Weird? Very. Meaning to the rest of the movie? She seems to only be there for the sex offender to do something creepy and unsettling like masturbating over her because we never see her again. And since that scene seems to break everything they were trying to do with the sex offender character if anything she breaks the movie just by being in it.

Brad and Kate Winslett’s character (whose name escapes me, which shows terrible unprofessionalism) are going to run away together but before Brad shows up he stops to skateboard with some skaters he’d been watching for a few weeks and then has a go himself and fails miserably, knocking himself out cold. Weird? More stupid. Meaning to the rest of the movie? Well you could argue that this then gives purpose to the earlier scenes of him watching the skaters instead of studying but I thought the skaters and the night football games were about him struggling with not being a kid anymore and you could argue this is just a plot device so he goes back to his wife so equilibrium is restored but of all things, this is a downright stupid choice.

Further still, the fact he is allowed to just go back to his wife after he’s been having an affair and even skips an important exam that could shape his future in the process is just fucked up. Admittedly this happens right at the end, so we’ll never know if she finds out or leaves him. But we end on the fact that he goes back to his wife. Kate to her panty sniffing husband and equilibrium is restored. What are you teaching us movie? That it’s okay as long as they don’t find out? A little experimentation is a okay as long as you do it in secret? That’s almost as good a moral stance as when Bella tells Edward in one of the Twilight movies, ‘It doesn’t matter that I cheated on you because I love you more.’ What the fuck, guys. I take a pretty hard stance due to personal experiences and being very proud of how faithful a boyfriend I am. So when I see shit like this in movies, it just makes me angry and sad. I mean yeah, it never says cheating is okay I guess, but there are never huge repercussions and honestly I think cheating should be attacked and condemned in movies, it's one of the few things in the world I truly do honestly despise. 

And I guess that is the main problem I have with this movie. The individual parts of this film are perfectly fine. It’s just that when you throw them all together with little reason for the near constant shifts of tone and often tones that don’t fit with what we’re watching, it’s just a mess.A mess of ideas, morals, reality and fiction.

Do I recommend it then? I’ll say no for one reason, Brad, a character in the movie, our male lead (I suppose) cheats on his wife who is played by Jennifer Connelly. JENNIFER fucking CONNELLY. I’ve had a crush on her since I was a kid when I saw The Labyrinth. And yes, I’ve learnt the hard way just how true the, ‘No matter how hot she is, there’s someone, somewhere, who is sick of her shit’ quote is. But even if Jennifer treated me like my ex did, if I got sex on tap from her, I wouldn’t care. SERIOUSLY Brad, you might be the fucking Nite Owl and tapped Malin Akerman (and I just realised the sex offender is played by the same guy who played Rorschach [holy shit!])  but you cheated on JENNIFER FUCKING CONNELLY. You are a FUCKING MORON. Even the film goes on about how perfect she is and how inferior Kate is. And he even admits to Kate that she is a knock out. Urgh, what is going on with your moral messages? You make no fucking sense. This film is such a mess.

Think About It!

-Locke.