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Such a frustrating disappointment

Pretty Good

Highly Overrated But Still Good

The acting in this movie is really good.

This movie is so good. You can relate sort of to the lives of Lily Jane and Billy Bob. It is a story of love, life, and scheming. My recommendation is to watch it.The movie is about a little girl(Lily Jane) who comes to live in the small town Medda. The story kicks off as soon as her to-be friends start to try to court her. She finds her only true love is to go to Hollywood. When a scheming crook comes to town and holds a talent show and the prize is a trip to Hollywood. Lily Jane enters and wins only to find out that the crook was lying. Lily Jane, Rosalba Cat, and Billy Bob go and arrest Mr. Quincy. You really need to watch this movie to find out if it is for you. Lily Jane is like Vanity Fair's Becky Sharp, witty, charming, and creative.

I noticed the title and blurb on Showtime In Demand as I was just looking for something to watch. My wife and I have enjoyed several other pieces (the Grass Harp, A Christmas Memory based on Capote's work, and it also looked like the type of movie we could enjoy with our grandkids. But, never did it occur to me that this would turn out to be the best film I've seen since A Beautiful Mind. It turns out that Children On Their Birthdays is a very special film.The first thing about this unheralded masterpiece that grabbed me was the score -- an ideal score for this idyllic fable. The next thing is the town, the fields, the swimming hole, the clothes -- all the visuals that make the town come so utterly alive -- every color and fabric evocative of this picaresque southern town in 1947. Next, the exposition of the characters, introduced through various vignettes, gives us insights to a dozen interesting townsfolk who we recognize and care about. Sheryl Lee Diamond is incredibly dead on as Billy Bob's mother -- Billy Bob being the lead character. The young actor playing Preacher, however, steals every scene he is in. Christopher MacDonald plays the sturdy Speedy with just the right hint of uncertainty. And, Tom Arnold is perfectly cast as the dapper con man who almost takes the life out of the town -- if not for our heroine -- and good ol' Preacher. The nuances at the town talent show and at the Country Fair sequences were also perfect. Another casting coup was getting Phyllis Frelich to play the role of the mute Mrs. Bobbitt.I think Children On Their Birthdays is a magnificent film with unexpectedly high production values. I highly recommend it.

Somewhere, in an alternate reality, it could be possible for a 13-year-old girl to have the wisdom of a Socrates, the social awareness of a Martin Luther King, the vocabulary and diction of a college professor, and the grace and beauty of an Audrey Hepburn. On the other hand, putting adult lines in the mouth of a child is usually done for satire. Situation comedies often depend for their gags on having kids speak smart-alecky lines. Hearing wisecracks from a kid that no kid would ever think of makes us laugh, and that's why the formula works. In this case, however, it isn't a comedy, and the lines written for the child are not intended to be amusing.Of course, no such alternate world exists, but what if it did? And what if such a girl turned up in the reality of a small southern town circa 1947? She would be as foreign and alien to that locality as if she had come from another universe, and in that sense becomes a kind of allegorical figure of redemption. It is presented as a "coming of age" film, but this is not just a story about the normal agonies of growing up. There is a "Twilight Zone" quality to the character of the girl. There are two boys who are "supposed" to be her age, and hence there is a sub-plot concerned with their feelings for her. But psycho-emotionally she is light-years more mature than they, and that is a point most reviewers seem to miss. It isn't so much about youth growing up over a case of first love, but a myth about a daughter of the gods sojourning among the mortals for a season.Truman Capote, who wrote the original short-story from which this film was adapted, was something of a heretic, and it is tempting to speculate on what the screenwriter might have been thinking in regard to this character. For example: What if Jesus came back in 1947 in the form of a little girl? Wouldn't "that" be a surprise? Not that there is anything about the story to suggest such a "religious" quality, but the character of the girl is clearly mythical in comparison to her alleged contemporaries. She comes into town mysteriously, there are miraculous events associated with her actions, she is wise beyond her years and even the elders are astonished by her words. It is a different story, and a pretty good one as well.

`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.