Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Alejandro Monteverde
Cast
Jakob Salvati,
Emily Watson,
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa,
Michael Rapaport,
David Henrie,
Ben Chaplin
Genre
Comedy,
Drama,
War
An eight-year-old boy is willing to do whatever it takes to end World War II so he can bring his father home. The story reveals the indescribable love a father has for his little boy and the love a son has for his father.
Observer by Rex Reed
There is a lot to admire here. Writer-director Alejandro Monteverde (Bella) is not afraid to take his time letting you get to know the characters or moving things along, but the movie never seems ponderous.
Movie Nation by Roger Moore
Little Boy is loaded with weighty subjects and teachable moments, all doled out between generous helpings of tragedy and sentiment. It’s ambitious, but a cluttered weeper whose lessons might have stuck, had there been fewer of them.
Slant Magazine by Ed Gonzalez
It conveys life experience to such a sentimentalized degree that the world comes to resemble only the sham of a Norman Rockwell painting.
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Farber
What makes it intermittently palatable even to non-believers is that it acknowledges some of the darker truths of the era.
Screen Daily by Tim Grierson
A drearily sincere movie about faith and tolerance, Little Boy boasts plenty of good intentions but very little else.
Screen International by Tim Grierson
A drearily sincere movie about faith and tolerance, Little Boy boasts plenty of good intentions but very little else.
The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd
A colossal miscalculation in audience uplift.
New York Post by Kyle Smith
Though Wilkinson gives an atypically restrained performance that lends the movie its best moments, and Watson manages to breathe a little life into her underwritten character, the movie is hopelessly simple-minded, with corny fantasy sequences, slathered-on folksiness and a plot twist that it would take a miracle of self-delusion not to see coming.
The Dissolve by Keith Phipps
In some ways it takes the right approach, attempting to mix moral lessons into a narrative rather than hit audiences over the head with them. But the lessons are so pat that every moment in which Pepper makes a good moral choice feels like an act of self-congratulation.
Variety by Justin Chang
The problem here isn’t theological; even if it were in service of a different message entirely, the sheer gracelessness of Monteverde’s storytelling would be a massive turnoff.
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
Examinations of faith on film don't have to be noxious.
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