Review of Little Boy (2015) by Greg B — 24 Apr 2015

"Little Boy" is a period piece from World War II about a young boy in suburban California whose father is conscripted to fight the Japanese on the foreign front in the Philippines. The boy misses his father desperately and believes his faith can bring him home.

The boy enlists the help of a Japanese-American and a minister to do a Biblical list of good deeds with the hope that he will, in no certain terms, be able to telekinetically bring his father home through mind power.

It is a very convoluted plot, and I found the racism disturbing. Racial slurs for Japanese Americans are used throughout the film that I don't care to repeat here, and even the boy says them matter-of-factly like it's second nature.

Our culture was very disturbing in the 1940's if children were being encouraged to say racial slurs, and it makes us Yankees look like we have no right to censure the Reich when we were doing the same thing on the home front.

Besides being disturbed by the subject matter, I also found the plot hokey and kind of ridiculous. The boy is never given a name, just being called "Little Boy" over and over, which got kind of grating.

It seems like he was more of an ideal than a person, meant to perpetuate the heavy-handed, faith-based message of the director. I also thought Kevin James, the only well-known actor in the film, was watered down in his role and stripped of his identity.

The movie does have a good message and is sweet in parts, but I thought the slipshod execution muddied this message ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C+.