Review of All the Little Animals (1999) by Cassandra M — 25 Jun 2009

I am a big fan of Christian Bale and, for many years more, of John Hurt. They both do their very best with these characters and I'm certain that with less talented actors this could have been an abysmal film. There are noticeable flaws in the logic of the plot and some pretty tacky direction which in combination make it seem rather like a B-grade afternoon kids soapie.

Too many scenes are either unnecessary or painfully drawn out. It's very likely that some artful editing would have made a vastly superior 80 minute feature from this 112 minutes.

Being vegetarian and an animal lover, I felt some empathy for the main characters but there's not all that much depth to them. The evil step-father is portrayed as just too much of a villainous cliché.