Who's In It: Elle Fanning, Felicity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson, Bill Pullman, Campbell Scott
The Basics: Dakota Fanning's little sister Elle is Phoebe, a child who develops what appears to be a pretty hard-core case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. (Look, you want a Fanning "type" for some serious business then you cast a Fanning. They're the Redgraves of child stardom.) And when she's cast in the lead of her elementary school's production of trippiest-kid's-story-ever Alice in Wonderland, all hell breaks loose in her nine-year-old mind.
What's The Deal:There are two kinds of movies about children. There are the ones that are also made for children, featuring weird idealized versions of childhood experience that help kid audiences transport themselves out of reality for a hundred minutes. And then there are movies about children for adults. Those are the ones where the kids succumb (sort of) to mental illness and their mothers have monologues about hating being a parent. Welcome to the latter. Your ability to deal with the downbeat subject matter will depend on your own sense of personal well-being.
Every Bummer Has A Silver Lining: Yes, it's an indie movie. Yes, it's about super-serious stuff. But it holds back when other movies might pour on the misery and it refuses to get all oddball about its characters' personality quirks. It really is a straightforward kid-cracking-like-an-egg film that wouldn't be out of place on Lifetime if only it didn't have such strong performances. If you see it then you're seeing it for the really good work by Patricia Clarkson, Felicity Huffman and Elle Fanning, who especially gets to show the world that she's just as unnervingly talented as her older sister. Like in a way that freaks you out sometimes.
Biggest Problem: The ending. Either footage was edited out in an effort to cut the running time, or the filmmakers didn't know how to end the movie in a way that didn't seem pushed, jumbled and rushed through. And the insistence on a final-act resolution for the troubled child is more in line with how a big studio would make a film than how a stronger-willed independent feature goes about its business.
Worth The Price Of A Ticket For: The moment when Patricia Clarkson, as a free-spirited but sometimes stern drama teacher, takes two little lazy girls to task. When they protest that it's just a dumb play and that they're only 10 years old, Clarkson barks, "Ten? When I was ten I played Cleopatra and the audience was spellbound. On the edge of their seats! Ten, indeed."