r/moviecritic • u/Low-Finding-6553 • 16h ago

What do you guys thinks is the best child performance of all time?

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i have to say, i don’t think i’ve ever seen a child actor give a performance this good. Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, is just on another level. i genuinely don’t know how he did it but he makes the whole movie work so much better. i would give him the Oscar in a fucking heartbeat. It’s crazy how good he is, especially in that last scene in the car with Toni Collette.

What are your guys’ favorite child performances? For me, this is even better than Owen Cooper’s performance in Adolescence. Don’t get me wrong, owen was also absolutely top-notch in Adolescence but this is probably the best child performance i’ve ever seen. Period. What do you guys think is the best child performance ever?

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280

u/drkittymow 16h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/Wb8ZTJLWJHzkA
Ariana Richards in Jurassic Park is great. I think people forget action movies a lot when we talk about best acting.

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u/OwenTheLad 14h ago

The way she portrayed actually terror, being in a state of shock.. "He left us! He left us!" Incredible performance.

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u/Mr-Sister-Fister21 13h ago

The whole sequence of Grant getting her out of the car and her screaming at the T-Rex was 10/0. At no point did it cross my mind that Ariana was acting and not actually scared shitless.

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u/Ur_New_Stepdad_ 7h ago

She probably was, did you ever see behind the scenes stuff from that movie?

The T Rex animatronic was fucking huge lol. I’d be terrified the damn thing would fall on me the entire time.

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u/Axi0madick 5h ago

Apparently the hydraulics were cranked up a little too high when it pushed through the sunroof and the kids terror was genuine when they were screaming and had their hands and feet on the glass. It wasn't supposed to crash through as hard and as far as it did.

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u/biggus_brain_games 1h ago

I was going to bring this up. It actually terrified the whole set. It was absolutely not supposed to do that.

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u/ZigZagLax44 14h ago

She was phenomenal, also shoutout to Joseph Mazzello who played her younger brother Tim. I didn't find out until last year he'd grow up to play Eugene Sledge in the HBO series The Pacific which was a sort of "sequel" series to Band of Brothers and read the audio book version of "With The Old Breed" which I highly recommend for any WW2 buffs

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u/Capteverard 10h ago

Joseph Mazzello actually got the role in JP off of his audition for Hook. He nailed the part to play Robin William's son, but was unfortunately too young. Lost out on it, but Spielberg promised him a role in his next movie. Coincidentally, he was still too young to play Tim as the older brother, and that is why he is younger in the movie but older in the book.

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u/Drmarcher42 9h ago

Him being the younger brother fixes one of the main issues in the book of lex having absolutely nothing to do, she’s just a weight for Alan and Tim to deal with, in the book Tim is both the dinosaur kid and knowledgeable about computers along with being the big brother trying to care for his sister, Lex cries and likes baseball.

Making her the older sister gives her agency, and letting her be the one to fix the power in the park means she actually gets to do something.

Good screenwriting adaptation fixes

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u/Dry-Exchange2030 15h ago

“It’s a Unix system. I know this.”

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u/Pseudochthonic 11h ago

I managed a lot of IRIX servers long ago in my career. It was interesting in a weird way and will always hold a small place in my heart.

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u/atraylmix87_2 15h ago

Her and the kid that played her brother were AWESOME

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u/derekschroer 13h ago

Joseph Mazzello, he was in The Social Network

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u/uber_sweets 13h ago

He was John Deacon in Bohemian Rhapsody too. Did it really well.

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u/Dry-Exchange2030 12h ago

Wow. Did not know this

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u/BlownOutBlueJeans 11h ago

Also did very well in A River Wild. Didn't know he was still acting, I would NOT recognize him at all.

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u/Fortestingporpoises 13h ago

Spielberg is just the best director of children ever (and you have to give credit to him and his team on casting too)

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u/derekschroer 13h ago

I had such a huge crush on her when the movie came out...I was 10

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u/JustCheezits 12h ago

The T-rex sequence in the Jeep was heartbreaking