Little Children

I had been looking forward to Todd Fields' "Little Children" and had to venture into town to see it as it was only playing on one screen in this town.

The direction by Fields is very good, the performances (Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly) are almost pitch-perfect in this tale of suburbia and the coy hook-up of a stay-at-home mom, Sarah (Winslet), and stay-at-home dad, Brad (Wilson). There are 2 other subplots, one deals with the presence of a convicted exposer/flasher (to little kids) named Ronnie. I did a double-take when I realized it was Jackie Earle Haley, best known as Kelly in the original "Bad News Bears" all those years ago. The other deals with Larry, a former cop who is hellbent on driving Ronnie out of the neighborhood with flyers and drive-by honkings.

There are a few somewhat disturbing sequences juxtaposed with light-hearted frivolity, to the point where I couldn't help but laugh at times. The downfall of the film for me is that the film's screenplay has too high a sense of the ironic by the time it concludes, and for me, it just never quite congeals into a truly satisfying look into the intermingling of these characters' lives in suburbia.

I give it 3 stars or a grade of B.