My point was that using a narrator to carry the plot forward is one of the most established (and over-used) tools in cinema, going back to... well, as long as we've had talkies, basically. Ever watch an old noir movie? Or for that matter,
American Beauty? Giving DH credit for that (or for the idea of wealthy suburban angst) is a bit like saying
The Departed ripped off
The Sopranos because it's a drama about the Mafia.
I sniffed out a review I wrote about this a while back. Let's just say I disagree with you.
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself:
"Well...How did I get here?"
OK, so starting a review about a movie about suburban angst by quoting Talking Heads' "
Once In A Lifetime" might be clichéd at this point. Then again,
Little Children is, in a lot of ways, a fairly clichéd movie. The theme of the hell lurking beneath the perfect exterior of the American suburb is one that has been covered in quite a few movies in recent years (
American Beauty,
The Ice Storm, the remake of
The Stepford Wives). In
Little Children, we have - once again - an affluent California suburb, where a few 30/40-somethings start looking at what happened to their lives, flinch at what they have become and in their boredom/fear turn to illicit love affairs, internet porn or fearmongering (the spirit of Mrs' Lovejoy's "WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?" looms large). Have we seen it before?
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
So what makes this more than just
American Beauty 2: Band Camp? For starters - Oscar nominations for Winslet (bored housewife) and Haley (paroled pedophile afraid of his own shadow) were hardly undeserved. Superb portraits of well-written characters all around, though I would rather have given the nod to Noah Emmerich as the resident asshole ex-cop who turns out to have his own reasons for becoming the neighbourhood watchdog. Then there's the delightful sense of dark humour. Todd Field (director) isn't afraid to pay homage either - in one absolutely hilarious scene he rips off
Jaws at the community pool, in another he has a cheating housewife give an impassioned speech about how Madame Bovary is NOT a slut - and all the various storylines and character arcs eventually come crashing together into a very rewarding (though slightly too convenient) ending. In the end, it's a movie about the danger of letting fear of The Big Bad Boogeyman - whether he be your neighbour or your own failed ambitions - rule you. If we build a life with the sole goal of providing absolute safety, we must be careful not to lose life itself. Which, while not exactly a revelation, deserves to be pointed out now and then, and that's what is done quite well here. Won't somebody please think of the children, indeed.
MY GOD! WHAT HAVE I DONE?
4/5.
