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List Price: $12.99 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 44541
Released: February 4, 2003 |
| Our Price: $5.48 |
| Used Price: $2.43 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A fourteen year old concert violinist spends the summer practicing while her friends are away at camp, and keeps herself entertained by keeping the secrets of her friends for 50 cents each.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 4-FEB-2003
Media Type: DVD
Description of Little Secrets:
Keeping secrets is difficult and, sometimes, unhealthy. Emily (Evan Rachel Wood) discovers a talent for keeping secrets early in life and deems the skill marketable enough to open her own neighborhood business. Emily is also an amazing violin player with high aspirations for a musical career. Secret-keeping proves lucrative at first, but eventually the burden weighs on Emily and affects her ability to concentrate, hurting her chances of making the local youth symphony. Resolving her dilemma requires the help of two new friends, her violin teacher, parents, and a fair amount of soul-searching. Eventually, Emily's journey leads to the dissolution of her business and a cathartic revelation of a major secret of her own. The moral of Emily's experiences: "You can't keep secrets about yourself and live a true life," and "if you want to be close to someone, you can't keep secrets from them." (Ages 7 and older) --Tami Horiuchi
Little Secrets Reviews:
My 8 year old daughter LOVES this movie 
2009-07-06 - We borrowed this movie from a friend for my daughters to watch in the car during a trip. Both of my daughters loved it, but especially my 8 year old. She wants to watch this every day, quotes lines from it, and talks about it. It's a good story with good lessons for young kids. With all the trash out there for kids today...this one stands out. And my daughter wouldn't let me rest until I bought it for her after I had to return the borrowed one.
Very good family movie 
2007-09-22 - This is one of those movies that is great for the whole family, young to old. It has enough fresh comedy to keep you laughing, and the proper drama to grip you and feel the emotion that the writers intended. Purchased for my nieces and they enjoyed it a lot when we watched it as a family on movie night.
"Blue Velvet" for the Middle School Set
2005-09-08 - David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" starts with some great images: ideal suburbia - kids crossing the street, firemen waving as they go down the road on their truck, and a man watering his garden. Then the guy has a stroke and collapses. We are then treated to the best shot of the film: his dog playfully jumping around the squirting hose he continues to hold as a toddler ambles toward him. Then the camera moves down for a macro shot of the insect world in his lawn, introducing the film's theme that there is a secret and much nastier world just below the surface of "Norman Rockwell" suburbia.
In "Little Secrets", Emily runs a business which keeps all the neighborhood secrets in a safe place for a fee. It takes Lynch's dark theme and turns it into a lesson about friendship and trust. Apparently this thematic content is the reason the film was given a PG rating, although it is hard to imagine that anyone would think this film required "parental guidance".
The film features a decent performance from Evan Rachel Wood (Emily), although there is nothing here that would lead anyone to think she was capable of her breakout performance in "Thirteen". Michael Angarano (Phillip) is fantastic opposite Wood and they have a nice chemistry. David Gallagher does a good job in a small role that is unnecessarily tacked onto the story, presumably to capitalize on his "7th Heaven" popularly. Blair Treu, the film's director, should have recognized in mid-production that a better resolution would have been the pairing of Emily and Phillip rather than Emily and David. It was an easy fix, minor rewrites and re-shooting a couple scenes to make Phillip the same age as Emily, they certainly look the same age. Gallagher's drawing power did not save the production commercially (it tanked big time at the box office) so they ruined the ending for nothing.
The director of photography used a lot of great crane shots and creative camera angles but overall the the shots should have been tighter (i.e. closer shots of the faces and eyes). One exception was Caitlin E. J. Meyer (Isabelle) who the camera loves and who steals her scenes as the nine-year old younger sister of Emily's best friend. Isabelle has the movie's best line "Life is complicated when you look like Claudia Schiffer".
This is a very original premise, a well-conceived and rather profound story. It should really appeal to those who liked "The Boy Who Could Fly" and "Harriet The Spy".
There is one especially good scene when the web of secrets starts to crumble. First Emily is angry at David because he was caught drinking which was his secret, making David angry at Phillip for telling Emily his secret, which makes Phillip angry at Emily for telling David that he had told her David's secret. "What a tangled web we weave...."
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
Little Secrets? More like silly hollywood film 
2005-04-16 - While this film was engaging on many fronts, I could not bring myself to enjoy it. It injected a fantasy world into the minds of our young children, synonomous with an opiate. While I do enjoy children's films, I found it was not up to par with the latest in children's technology (Spy Kids 3-D is a good example of this). The acting was paralled by Keanu Reaves - outright silly! The story was not compelling enough to bring me to the edge of my seat. I could not recommend this film to any family household. If you're looking for a great cinema for your Parker Brother's night, check out Slam Dunk Ernest.
Worth watching over and over
2005-01-22 - I simply LOVED this movie. I enjoyed the acting, the story and the love of classical and orchestra music that was incorporated in the story. I enjoyed the little stories of the small children that were included throughout the movie and appreciated being able to watch a movie that not only could my children watch, but that I would enjoy with them. Don't miss it.
