Little Boy
Open Road Films | Release Date: April 24, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
30
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 24 Critic Reviews
Positive:
3
Mixed:
8
Negative:
13
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
40
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 23, 2015
Checking subtlety at the door, Monteverde goes for broke on the emotional-manipulation front. Perhaps that's OK as a device for illustrating a parable, but it doesn't make for much of a movie. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleSteve DavisApr 29, 2015
For all its unsubtle sentimentality (including a you-can-see-it-from-a-mile-away plot twist), it remains unclear whether Little Boy intends to celebrate the conviction of belief or to mock it. It’s an unfortunate confusion that permanently stunts its growth. Read full review
38
Boston GlobePeter KeoughApr 23, 2015
The film is so bizarre, contrived, manipulative, and meretricious that anything is possible. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesBill ZweckerApr 23, 2015
While the lead actors deliver lovely performances, it’s a shame they have to work with material so ham-handed and overbearing. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 23, 2015
Director Monteverde, whose previous feature, "Bella," came out nine years ago, clearly meant his film to lift up everyone and condescend to no one, least of all Pepper and Hashimoto. But Little Boy comes off as a picture-postcard fake. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleApr 23, 2015
It's all simplistic sermonizing in director and co-writer Alejandro Monteverde's hands, devoid of any thoughtful messiness about wartime mind-sets or family despair, and quick to sand any edges with postcard-pretty coastal town vistas and cutesy music cues. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 22, 2015
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. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottApr 24, 2015
Functioning as more parable than sermon, it offers at least a hint of a blueprint for other faith filmmakers who want their message to reach beyond the front pew. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJordan HoffmanApr 23, 2015
Somewhere amid the storytelling rubble in Little Boy there’s a decent message against racial prejudice. But it’s suffocated beneath a hokey premise and hopelessly square execution. Read full review
25
New York PostKyle SmithApr 22, 2015
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. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedApr 22, 2015
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. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireApr 24, 2015
It’s meant to be a tale of uplift for faith-based audiences, but instead wears viewers down with a heavy-handed narrative, an overbearing score and voiceover that spells out everything in cringe-inducing, folksy tones. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoApr 23, 2015
The film has a good cast, and is competently made in a plain-vanilla way, but its greatest appeal will be to those who share its endorsement of traditional religious values. Read full review
30
Screen DailyTim GriersonApr 6, 2015
A drearily sincere movie about faith and tolerance, Little Boy boasts plenty of good intentions but very little else. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezApr 18, 2015
It conveys life experience to such a sentimentalized degree that the world comes to resemble only the sham of a Norman Rockwell painting. Read full review
67
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallApr 23, 2015
In the end, this is a pleasant parable, brimming with Rockwellian visuals and homespun decency. Harder hearts will dismiss it as corny and manipulative, which it is. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with that. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Apr 22, 2015
A colossal miscalculation in audience uplift. Read full review
20
The DissolveKeith PhippsApr 23, 2015
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. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterStephen FarberApr 6, 2015
What makes it intermittently palatable even to non-believers is that it acknowledges some of the darker truths of the era. Read full review
20
The New York TimesStephen HoldenApr 23, 2015
The steady performances of Tom Wilkinson, playing a kindly priest, and Emily Watson, an angelic mother, in Alejandro Monteverde’s Little Boy do little to offset the cloying sweetness of a movie that has the haranguing inspirational tone of a marathon Sunday-school lesson. Read full review
40
TheWrapInkoo KangApr 24, 2015
Most impressively, the film admits that the line between faith and magical thinking isn’t as solid as most believers would care to admit — and the Church knows it. Unfortunately, these worthwhile ideas are contained in a phony-baloney tale more artificial than a polyester teddy bear stuffed with Splenda and Cheez Whiz — and just as appealing. Read full review
20
VarietyJustin ChangApr 16, 2015
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. Read full review
10
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlApr 23, 2015
Examinations of faith on film don't have to be noxious. Read full review
37
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanApr 23, 2015
Little Boy is a as phony as a game of three-card monte. Read full review
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