25
A colossal miscalculation in audience uplift.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
10
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
Examinations of faith on film don't have to be noxious.
50
It conveys life experience to such a sentimentalized degree that the world comes to resemble only the sham of a Norman Rockwell painting.
20
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.
20
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.
25
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.
75
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.
50
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.
50
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.
30
Screen International by Tim Grierson
A drearily sincere movie about faith and tolerance, Little Boy boasts plenty of good intentions but very little else.