Little children

on film can be wonderfully charming - and terribly annoying.

Especially the latter.

You can see in front of you how the screenwriter has fed and crouched down to lines that will make the spectator cuddle and exclaim an inner "Oooh".

Actually, it's just about writing adult lines and stuffing them in a child's mouth.

Most often it goes to fanders, the construction becomes too clear and crisp audience-free, but on occasion the lines come to life and cut through even the thickest, mental defense wall.


Like here.

Young Woody Norman

, who plays a shared lead role with Joaquin Phoenix, has that little extra that turns dialogue into light breezes of life.

He masters his small facial muscles to perfection, reaching nuances that put most older colleagues in the corner of shame.

But not Joaquin Phoenix, of course.

He always makes the canvas tremble, even if this is not close to the diabolical effort in the Joker.

But then the role is also the exact opposite, and difficult to put into spin.

Here, Phoenix makes a gentle middle-aged radio journalist who for a few weeks takes care of his peculiar nephew Jesse, who has no friends but a sprawling and infectious curiosity about life.

What Johnny has lost but is now slowly regaining.

Yes, you know how it usually goes.

The unequal couple bang on in the expected plot and in the end everyone has learned something nice.

But if I now

have to stop raging, there are also some painful scenes here, which gain extra indie weight thanks to the well-created black and white photo.

Especially the sequence where the little uncle Jesse is finally allowed to break up and just be a child, and in the way of little boys shouts loudly for mother.

There I become a wet spot in the cinema chair.

Which, of course, is the point.

Director and screenwriter Mike Mills (celebrated for Women of All Times, 2016) is not the one who fears the emotional, and here he constantly balances on a slack line between the empathetic and the sentimental - towards the end, unfortunately, mostly the latter.

For a long time it looked

like C'mon, c'mon would become an obvious Oscar contender but in the end there was no nomination at all.

Which is perfectly fine.

Even if a figurine would have sat nicely in Woody Norman's little fist.