Ah, the good ol’ days, where streets were clean, ice cream was a nickel and social lightweights tread softly at all times for fear of angry mobs. You just had to have faith that the mob wouldn’t catch you today.
Little Boy is all about faith. This is a tale of an adorable undersized eight-year-old, Pepper Busbee (Jakob Salvati), who goes about checking off a faith checklist in order to bring his dad back from WWII. In the rarely imposed medieval Chinese army conscription act of the 1940s –boy, I just gotta brush up on my history—dad (Michael Rapaport) is representing the Busbees in the war because troubled teen London (David Henrie) has flat feet. Is it not bad enough dad clearly favors Pepper over London? Now to add to the pain, London gets to know dad went to war in his place? But the story isn’t really about London; it’s about three-foot-eight Pepper. Inspired by a magic show, the diminutive eight-year-old believes he is imbued with super powers, so long as he concentrates hard enough. Use them wisely, young man.
FWIW, if you’re on a diet, the Pepper Busbee makes a lousy entrée.
The local cleric (Tom Wilkinson) hands Pepper a “To Do” list to bring his father home from war safely. Father Oliver knows full well the list and Old Man Busbee’s return are unconnected, but he also knows the value of misleading gullible children whenever possible. Hmmm, lemme see if I can remember the laundry list of items: “Visit the sick” “Clothe the naked” … “Fix a fight” “Call your mom every once in a while, for goodness sake” and “Don’t feed them after midnight.” Father Oliver adds a special one to the bottom to make friends with Hashimoto (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the local outcaste.
O’Hare, CA during war time was an eclectic collection of the benevolent and the awful-we-all-choose-to-ignore. The town is small, neat, peaceful and nodody seems to mind the perpetual bullying directed at Hashimoto, the town’s only Japanese resident. Hey, it’s war time. The town also takes a blind eye to the fact that a pack of tween bullies constantly chases down and pummels a small eight-year-old. Hey, it’s war time.
Little Boy is not without charm. The kid is Macauley-adorable, after all. And the take on tolerance is important, as is the understanding that, even if adopted for selfish reasons, good deeds are still good deeds.
So when not being bullied or tagging around the town leper (do we really want to encourage the relationship between the reclusive Japanese man and the kid? And what does mom – Emily Watson— have to say about all this?), Pepper has taken to assuming a superhero stance and directional
grunting to prove he has super powers. The culmination of this idiocy is when the town notes that Little Boy’s seaward guttural moans have led to the atomic devastation of Hiroshima. The proof? Well, the bomb’s nickname “Little Boy,” of course.
Do you really want a small boy to believe he’s responsible for an atomic bomb that resulted in over 100,000 civilian deaths? Eventually, he’s gonna be kinda messed up about it.
This is kind of the theme of Little Boy – Faith gives us power. Power moves mountains. Some people die, but it’s ok as we didn’t know them. There’s also a fairly unforgiveable false climax in this film, but aside from all that, hey fun for the whole Christian family, yay!
♪Well, I guess would be nice
If I could grow my body
Seems all others bodies
Reach four-foot-two
But I gotta play nice
With that guy I don’t respect
Cause if so I can expect
To get dad back, too
Oh but I
Need some time to perfect my motion
Of wounded grunting at the ocean floor
Cause I caused
That earthquake with my devotion
All it takes is this list, baby
And he’ll come back to my door
‘Cause I got me some faith♫
Rated PG-13, 106 Minutes
D: Alejandro Monteverde
W: Alejandro Monteverde, Pepe Portillo
Genre: You gotta believe!
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Can you reduce all of WWII to a boy wishing his father home?
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Anybody else here have an issue with an 8-year-old being compared to an atomic bomb?
♪ Parody inspired by “Faith”
