This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Little Children (2006) is a film that follows several different characters and their painful lives. Sarah (Kate Winslet) is a wife and mother of a three year girl. Brad (Patrick Wilson) is a husband and father of a toddler aged son, he stays home with his son while his wife is the main breadwinner. They both take their children to the nearby playground during the day, that is where they end up meeting. They end up spending more and more time with one another during the day when they take their kids out. This time they spend eventually turns into an affair. They end up having sex while their spouses are at work. Then, the film also follows the character of Ronnie, played by Jackie Earle Haley. Ronnie is a sexual predator, he was arrested for exposing himself to a minor, and now he is living with his mother and everyone in the neighborhood, parents especially, are very worried that he's living near them, because of the large amount of kids in the neighborhood. There are other characters that are in the mix too, like Wilson's wife in the film, played by Jennifer Connelly, and Noah Emmerich. I will say that the acting in this film is superb all around, Winslet and Haley especially, very well deserved academy award nominations. And the writing is also just spectacular! Another well deserved nomination. The writing is done in a way that gives each character enough depth and gives a lot of description to all the events that happen. I really liked the narration throughout the movie, it added onto everything. That plus the very well written dialogue, it all comes together in a great way. 10/10 for Little Children! Most definitely recommended.

If you ask me - I think that a much more fitting title for this decidedly bleak, black comedy (from 2006) would have been "American Beauty: The Sequel".Filled to overflowing with endless ill-will and depressing personal dramas - Little Children's story of small-town gossip, infidelity, fetish, and dissatisfaction in the bedroom (as well as a bit of sexual perversion thrown into the mix, for good measure) - Left me feeling like I seriously needed to take a long, hot shower, after it was all over, in order to scrub away all of the trauma and taint that prevailed and totally saturated me during this picture's 2.2-hour running time.To be sure - Little Children is the sort of little "tattle-tale" soap opera that isn't gonna appeal to everyone's tastes. No way. But, with that said - It certainly did contain its fair share of truly compelling moments that helped to earn it a 5-star rating from yours truly, Dalbert Pringle.

Little Children, granted isn't the best movie ever made, and is probably given more credit than it deserves. It's good but not great. But may'be I should look closer, for it is quite a character study into flawed characters, a lot of who really hate themselves. It is an excellent screenplay, three interweaving stories, through characters, driven by situations and circumstances, the main plot really being the release of a known 48 year old pedophile, and an angry community. The pedo is chillingly played by Jackie Earle Hayley, in just what it is virtuoso acting, from a guy who's made way too less movies, and always impresses in other films. He's an actor to watch. But all the other performances should be commended too, some who I don't need to spout names. It also has a Happiness movie character playing much the same kind of shy character as she did in that 99 Art-house film. Little Children is very realistic, especially in the public versus pedophile scenario, where one character gets really heated, among the other of a disfavoring community. This is so real, where the great script just takes on a real approach. What I hated about little children, was that sleepy middle aged, informing voice over, to really describe how the characters feel. We don't need that. Let the characters do that. This is what minimally ruined what is otherwise a good film, with a kind of un befitting but cute title. Highly recommended.

Little Children is one of those films that essentially looks at various people's lives and tries to weave stories together in order to come to some kind of profound conclusion. Narratives of this nature are risky as when they're done wrong you can sometimes find yourself alienating your audience. Unfortunately, due to the fact that every storyline is either badly developed, ridiculous or uninteresting it did make this film a rather long and painful two hours....The idea of a 'reformed' paedophile moving into an area where lots of children are living and stirring up fear and anxiety amongst the families of those children could potentially have made for a very interesting social commentary. This was actually where I hoped that the film would have focused its attention. Sadly, for most of its running time it focused on bored suburban housewife Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) in a loveless marriage (yawn!!!) having an affair with another married man called Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson) who has no real direction in life and to me seemed to be living in the past. It's a trite and clichéd storyline which might have been bearable if Brad and Sarah had any character to them - the problem is that they are two of the dullest characters I've seen in a film and it made me feel mildly depressed watching them for over two hours. Whilst Sarah's reasons for wanting an affair are reasonable I struggled understanding what motivated Brad to have an affair? The only thing I remember was him being annoyed about their kid sharing a bed with them... That to me would not make most men stray (particularly as they seemed happy at other times).Another thing that really wound me up when watching this film was the voice-over; it wasn't the content of the voice-over (some of it was quite insightful), but it was more the way that the voice-over was delivered. To me it was really cheesy and sounded like something you'd hear on some lame 'self-help' video. It was just ridiculous and laughable. Sarah's life mirroring that of a fictional character called Madame Bovary was also rather cheesy. We learn during the course of the film that Sarah's husband becomes addicted to porn and Sarah makes a big deal about it (understandably) and tells her husband that 'we need to talk', but then that storyline is dropped and the next time we see her husband he's sat round a dinner table at Brad's and they're all playing happy families. To me it seemed rather pointless creating that storyline and then not taking it anywhere. The acting performances were terrible whereby nearly everyone seemed to be sleepwalking through the picture - the likes of Connelly, Wilson & Winslet are all capable of much better than this, but maybe they were all sleepwalking through the film because they were so bored by everything - hey if that's the case then I know how they feel!!!.The more 'interesting' aspect of the film involving the 'reformed' paedophile Ronnie (superbly portrayed by Jackie Haley) is virtually ignored for almost the entire running time. There's one incident in the pool and one incident when Ronnie goes on a date. The only mildly interesting storyline I found here was the storyline between Ronnie and Larry. When it's revealed that Larry killed a teenager in the mistaken belief that he was about to shoot another kid (both were carrying toy guns) I got the impression that Larry terrorised Ronnie more as a way of making himself feel less guilty for what he did to that teenager. Whilst Ronnie is an interesting character I never felt sure what the writers were trying to say about his character? He seems to be painted in a sympathetic light and doesn't show any signs that he's going to harm anyone, but then at the end of his date he goes all psycho on his date for no reason?? Then later his mum dies and we're presumably supposed to feel sorry for him again???Maybe the point of the film was to show that all humans are flawed and that in life maybe people should be given a second chance (there also seemed to be themes about letting go of the past and moving on). It's too bad that as a whole the bulk of the story is dull, boring and uninteresting (like a lot of the characters).