Though most of his films feature child characters, I didn’t expect writer-director Todd Solondz (Happiness, Dark Horse) to be such an astute critic of children’s movies. But in a recent interview with Filmmaker magazine, he observes:
They’re always making these very ornate, complicated, technologically fancy pictures for children. But what they forget is that children like to fill in the spaces. They don’t need it to be so expensive and fancy. It’s the parents who need that. The children, you just give them cardboard and sets that are very amateurish and they can transform it. A lot of people forget that they have that gift. A lot of the charm of the movies for children is lost because there’s so much money spent to outdo the effects of what was done the last time. It seems a little bit in vain.