Movie Review: Little Giants
The Amblin Entertainment film, Little Giants, opened on this date in 1994. The family comedy starred Rock Moranis & Ed O’Neil. Little Giants was directed by Duwayne Dunham.Synopsis:
Little Giants is about a small town and its peewee football team. Ed O’Neil plays Kevin O’Shea, a football god in the town who is putting together a team of football stars. Rick Moranis plays his brother, Danny, and he has no athletic skill whatsoever. Danny isn’t comfortable with the way his brother is putting together his team and feels it’s unfair to the kids that aren’t physically gifted in the town. Danny starts a team of his own, led by his very sporty daughter, to take down his brother’s dominate squad.
Positives:
- Seeing Rick Moranis in the film makes me really miss the retired actor. Even though this isn’t him at his best, he’s still a lot of fun to see on screen.
- Little Giants has enough charm, laughs, and memorable moments to entertain children. I can see this film amusing a young crowd even today.
- Most of the kids in the film give fine and likable performances.
- Negatives:
- Little Giants is extremely formulaic and you can see every twist and turn coming long before it happens. Which, to be fair, is something a kid’s film kind of has to do—but it’s still not something older audiences will be able to look past.
- The kids play such cliché characters that it’s hard to really enjoy their roles. There is the fat kid, tomboy, nerd, wimp, bully and every other children’s movie cliché character you could imagine.
- The comedy is almost exclusively centered on fart jokes, blows to the crotch and over the top physical comedy that often completely disregards any sense of reality. Again, kids will love this, but it would have been nice if there were a few jokes in there for people over the age of 12.
- Rick Moranis and Ed O’Neil both give performances that are fine, but I don’t buy that they are brothers at any point in the film. I understand that them not coming across as siblings is the idea, but it still hurts the story that you don’t buy the connection.
It’s hard to review a film like Little Giants and not feel a little guilty about bringing up negative of aspects of a film that you know the intended audience will love. But, even as a kid’s film, there are things Little Giants could have done better. Little Giants is completely harmless and has enough likable components that I wouldn’t call it a misfire. If you have kids, you could do a lot worse than showing them Little Giants, they will probably have a lot of fun with it. I just don’t feel like adults will get much out of it.
Rating: C