An Affair to Forget

SUBURBAN ANGST is a staple of pop culture, and Little Children pours the viewer a double shot just to be sure she understands how stifling the nice house, the immaculate yard, and the adorable kid can be. Not only do Sarah and Brad have to deal with marriages made stale by inattentive spouses and the demands of childcare, they also are faced with the ramifications of a sex offender living in their perfect neighborhood. And so, over the course of a summer, while the two protagonists drift into an inevitable affair, Ronnie the perv has to deal with a local vigilante group hassling him and his mother, in whose house he now lives.

If all of this sounds heavy-handed and obvious, well, you've just nailed the movie's biggest flaw.

Adapted by Todd Field and Tom Perrotta from Perrotta's novel and directed by Field, Little Children is so intent on hammering home its messages that it uses portentous voiceovers from an anonymous narrator throughout the film. To the writers' credit, the main characters are not misunderstood souls wrongly judged by the harping dwellers of their happy little enclave. Brad's wife isn't a shrew from whom anyone would stray; she's a flawed but genuinely decent woman, and he is flat-out cheating on her. While Sarah's husband would rather lock himself in a room and stare at garden-variety porn that be with, you know, Kate Winslet (who is as terrific as usual), she herself has made her own bed, failing to complete her dissertation in literature and relegating herself to defending Madame Bovary -- both the book and the character -- at the neighborhood book group instead of creating her own art. And Ronnie is not just creepy but genuinely sick -- any parent watching would think he deserves every bit of abuse hurled his way.

But the film's climax, in which Sarah, Brad, and Ronnie come to terms with their personal shortcomings and resolve their respective personal crises, is a series of overwrought resolutions that are a perfect reflection of the previous two hours of pedantic storytelling. By the end of the movie I was left exhausted, feeling as if I had engaged in the egregious behavior of the characters I'd been watching. It was enough to make me want to chuck my nice suburban home and flee to the city for a while.

Rating: *** (of 5)