Little Men Movie Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

Little Men

So I just got back from watching Ira Sach's latest film, Little Men, a film about two buys who basically become best friends despite each of their parents having a falling out over residency. Up until today, I hadn't seen anything by Ira Sachs. In fact the only film I'd even heard of from his filmography was 2014's Love is Strange. And after seeing this film, my overall thoughts on it are that it's just okay, certainly not worth the 100% on Rotten Tomatoes it currently has.

Don't get me wrong here, this movie has plenty going for it. For starters, the cast is really good overall, with some pretty impressive young actor performances. Little Men is one of those movies much like the average Linklater film or Clerks that is going for a more real world vibe, normal tone, and realistic dialogue. And movies like that can completely fall apart if the characters aren't believable. Luckily, this movie has the advantage of having performances that feel legitimate.

As far as the dialogue goes, it's also really good and really well written. It all feels very real, especially in the first act of the film. In fact, the first act is probably the best one, before the actual plot of the movie kicked in and the characters were given the chance to just be characters. And while the characters themselves aren't that great (I'll get into that in a bit), the fact that this movie knows how to balance a serious scene and a comedic one into a working dramedy is nice to see.

However, the first act dialogue for me is kind of about it as far as pro's with the script go, the rest of the script I gotta admit I wasn't that into. Whenever a director tries to make a movie with a "real world" tone to both the plot and characters, there's some very specific things that need to happen in order for it to work. Linklater has seemingly perfected his formula for this, Everybody Wants Some, Boyhood, and the Before films don't really have a plot but have a series of mini-events in the film, and they also have unique and well developed characters. Little Men doesn't do either of those things, it goes for an overarching definable plot, which normally would be okay but in a film like this it feels really out of place. And it didn't help that none of these characters particularly interested me, I didn't care about what happened to them by the end of the story.

Final Rating
So all in all, do I recommend Little Men? Eh, probably not. There's enough here for it to be good, so if you decide to see it it's not a total letdown. However, there's also enough that's wrong with the movie that I can't say I recommend it.