88% What Maisie Knew

All Critics (68) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (60) | Rotten (8)

On the surface, this indie does sound like standard-issue material, but its dynamics are far more complex than its simple exterior.

What Maisie Knew gives the audience a ground-eye view of its mesmerizing title character, a plucky, charismatic New Yorker who navigates downtown bars and building lobbies with the street savvy of a pro.

The result is a film that deeply engages us on multiple levels. Not only do we wonder what Maisie knows and how she knows it, we want to get this seedling to a place where she won't have to be transplanted every day.

It's a study of human nature, not at its worst, but at its most typically pathetic, and it goes to show that the more things don't change, the more they stay lousy.

Intimate, unnerving and entirely addictive.

The aggravatingly manipulative What Maisie Knew feels, perhaps deliberately, as if its emotions were drawn in brightly colored crayon.

It's an intimate, well-acted and nuanced film that provides a fresh angle on an all-too-familiar struggle.

Onata Aprile is never showy and always authentic, a rare find in a child actor. In fact, she is one of the most self-possessed actors I've seen of any age.

A movie that's much easier to admire than to actually enjoy, no matter how well done or acted.

Onata Aprile's short career should blossom as people react to her subtle performance here.

Despite the big-name adults around her, it's the unknown Onata Aprile who is the star of this movie.

Gazing on Maisie, you want to know what she knows. That you can't is at once your dilemma and your opportunity, what adults must engage in order to be adults.

Despite a sensitive, mature performance from Onata Aprile as Maisie, the girl remains withdrawn and opaque throughout. In telling this sad story from her perspective, it never quite plugs in to what Maisie felt.

An almost uncomfortably plausible depiction of the effects of bad parenting on a fragile psyche.

This is exactly the kind of film that David and I live to write about. A true team effort --- great writing, directing and acting.

The adult actors are all terrific, yet it is the remarkable Onata Aprile who is the glue that holds this little gem together.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/what_maisie_knew_2012/

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