Rating:
Director: Blair Treu
Writer: Jessica Barondes
Producers: Jessica Barondes, Don Schain, Blair Treu
Director of Photography: Brian Sullivan
Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, Michael Angarano, David Gallagher, Vivica A. Fox
IMDB Page
| LITTLE SECRETS Rating: Director: Blair Treu Writer: Jessica Barondes Producers: Jessica Barondes, Don Schain, Blair Treu Director of Photography: Brian Sullivan Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, Michael Angarano, David Gallagher, Vivica A. Fox IMDB Page |
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Review by: Ryan
Kugler
8/17/02
If parents can get their kids (especially their daughters) to take a chance on a small film that doesn't feature any Hollywood stars and doesn't contain state-of-the-art special effects, they'll be in for a little (no pun intended) treat. Granted, I'm not the target audience for Little Secrets, but I appreciated it for what it was -- an unpretentious and well-meaning film with positive messages, the likes of which have been severely lacking in family films of late.
Emily (Simone co-star Evan Rachel Wood) isn't your typical movie-teenager. She's smart and likable and is passionate about things other than boys and getting into trouble. Being as ambitious as she is, Emily decides to skip out on summer camp with her friends, so she can stay at home and practice the violin for an upcoming audition with the local symphony.
Playing the violin is what drives Emily, but her other gift, and the thing that makes her so well respected by the neighborhood kids, is her ability to keep a secret better than anybody else. Capitalizing on this gift, she runs a booth where the kids line up and pay her to keep their secrets. Emily has a whole system worked out, and all of the kids trust her with information regarding anything from email fraud to shoplifting to the discovery of fossils in the backyard.
When a new family moves into the neighborhood, Emily gets involved in a brother/sister kind of friendship with Philip (Michael Angarano, young William in Almost Famous), a smitten kid that welcomes her secret keeping services. The two become inseparable, but things change when he tells her a secret having to do with why his older brother David (David Gallagher) just got kicked out of camp. This triggers something in her, and she immediately distances herself from her new best friend.
With her mom about to give birth, the audition getting closer and the return of David and her girlfriends, Emily's pressures are growing and her once peaceful and stress-free summer is becoming a little too much for a teenager to handle. To make matters even worse, some of the secrets that she's supposed to keep are starting to get out, including a major one of her own.
The story of Little Secrets is
strictly afterschool special material, but the nice direction
by Blair Treu (especially in the Slacker-like opening introduction
to the neighborhood) and the central performance by star-in-the-making
Wood, elevates it into something a little better. It does get
a bit too melodramatic as it progresses (as one issue begins to
pile up after the next) and the last ten minutes are pretty contrived,
but this is a family film dammit, and happy endings and tidy wrap-ups
are to be expected.
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