Children on Their Birthdays

`Children on their Birthdays' is not meant to tax your cranium or exercise your sense of adventure; rather, to take you on a gentle stroll through the (not quite) coming of age of four thirteen-year-olds in 1940's Alabama. Joe Pichler and Jesse Plemmons demonstrate some real versatility in portraying the two young friends/rivals and Tania Raymonde delivers a dose of the same smarts and mystery she's done on TV in "Malcolm in the Middle". You can take your young kids to this one. It supplies plenty of tenderness and a little slapstick as the kids and the town get mixed around with romance, snake oil, some amazingly hardy roses and a really fine old red tow truck.

My wife and I saw this film at a private showing in Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Festival. We thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a delightful, amusing and entertaining movie with a hard edge to it which gives added depth to the story and the period setting. We thought that it was extremely well acted - and special praise must go to the children themselves - very well directed with fine camera work which enriched to period atmosphere. We think audiences will enjoy it greatly.

In the classic tradition of "Stand By Me", "the Man on the Moon" and "My Dog Skip, "Children on their Birthdays" is truly yet to become a new instant classic for years to come and one family/drama movie that's worth checking out based off Truman Capote's classic short story. the story is brilliant, the characters are very good and the cast is astounding including Sheryl Lee (Twin Peaks), Christopher Macdonald (Happy Gilmore), Tom Arnold (True Lies) and former child actor Joe Pichler in his final film before his disappearance in 2006, and Tania Raymonde in her film debut as well! this movie definitely has touching, moving, sweet and elevating scenes including Lily Jane Bobbit singing "I have to Dream" in one scene during the Talent Show and one scene where Billy Bob's Mother teaching him dance steps while listening to Big Band music during the Post-World War 2 America which is quite good, and so I recommend checking this family/drama movie out even if your born and raised in Alabama and those who are raised in the Southern United States as well.

Watching a movie like this that turns out to be a disaster is a strange experience. It's "based" on one of Truman Capote's early short stories. Well, it has the title and characters and setting. The story? Bits and pieces of it.

What's good= If there were an Oscar given for Best Location Scout, this would have won it. The houses and stores are amazing and there are lots of old cars. There's also some great (with the exception of a Celine Dion song that comes out of nowhere) music, using lots of songs from the Big Band era. Ditto costumes and hairstyles.

What's bad= Almost everything else. There are too many situations that had me and Mrs. Bear simply rolling our eyes. But the worst thing is the heavy "Southern" accents the actors have. On stage, they could have gotten away with this. But film is a terribly unforgiving medium in that you've got actors standing on real streets in front of real houses. Director Mark Medoff is a hugely talented writer, having won a Tony Award for CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD. What possessed a writer from Illinois, shooting in great locations in his home state, to think he could handle the speech patterns of the rural South? I recently saw an independent film called NOBLE THINGS, which was set and filmed in the Beaumont, Texas, area. Because its director couldn't afford a lot of Hollywood actors he hired actors from Houston and Beaumont and their speech patterns were natural and unaffected.

At best, CHILDREN ON THEIR BIRTHDAYS is a noble effort gone bad. At worst, its abject financial failure (less than $60 thousand returned on a $10 million investment, although it made some more return on investment through DVD and cable)gives Hollywood an excuse to pump out more sequels, more unwanted remakes, and more ultra violent comic book movies. Maybe I should go back and reduce that rating of 3 even lower.

I rented the DVD because I was simply in the mood to watch a movie, and I'd seen almost everything else new that hadn't already been rented out. So I gave "Children on Their Birthdays" a shot, not expecting too much.

I was surprised to discover that I really enjoyed it. In fact, the day after I had watched it, I found myself thinking about the characters and smiling. So I bought the DVD and have watched it several times since then.

I won't go into a detailed description, because that's already been done. But the characters are endearing. Despite a forced southern accent by Miss Lily Jane Bobbit, she is still the centerpiece of the movie. All the children performed wonderfully.

The movie is a study in contrasts: Honesty vs. dishonesty, rural vs. urban, child vs. adult, etc. Overall, it's a movie deserving of a higher rating than it has received.

I gave it an 8.