Little Giants Parent Guide
Parent Movie Review
Ed O’Neill and Rick Moranis play Kevin and Danny O’Shea, two brothers that reflect the opposite ends of typecast family images. Kevin is a big football hero and Danny is the small, quiet brother who always wanted to play football, but his big bully sibling wouldn’t let him. So when it comes time to find a football team to go to the state championship, both Kevin and Danny decide to coach their own team. The stage is set folks, for another carbon copy sports script.
It amazes me how some stories get made into movies. I found four writers in the credits, and all I can think to justify this is that one was hanging onto the lightbulb while the other three were turning the ladder. Little Giants is your typical little kid against big kid movie. It’s the misfits against the jocks, and it is full of typecast characters which kids have used as standard judging precedents for years.
The problem with this story is that it assumes that any boy who is interested in science has a deep down inner dream to be a big time football star. I can tell you first hand that this assumption is not always correct. Nerd Gustafson never did want to play football, and most of my nerdy friends didn’t either. The other wrong assumption is that a boy with athletic abilities is brain dead. Why do we continue to propagate these fallacies of male children in an era where we are telling our girls that they can do and be anything they want?
The fat kids in these movies always have gas, the smart kids always carry a computer and have runny noses, and the girl really wants to be a guy, but secretly puts on makeup when no one is looking. I will be happy when screenwriters put away these stamped out clones and try coming up with some characters that look like the ones I find in my child’s school.
Starring Rick Moranis, Ed O'Neill. Running time: 107 minutes. Theatrical release October 14, 1994. Updated April 30, 2009