It started with(500) Days of Summer.
Kids dispensing advice beyond their years had never bothered me before.
In fact, I was kind of drawn to it.
Credit: Everett Collection
I loved Natalie Portmans Lou Reed-quoting Marty inBeautiful Girlsand Virginia Weilders conniving Dinah Lord inThe Philadelphia Story.
It was too dumb to bear.
All my life, I wanted to grow up.
I wanted to appear older, so people would take me seriously.
It all sounded so good to me.
Growing up, getting a job, getting married, but its all a scam.
And love, thats the biggest scam of all.
I was in love, and I …
I know that makes some of you laugh, cause Im only 13.
But, whatever, I was.
It sounded good to me when I younger, but it just doesnt work that way.
There is no such thing as one true love.
Nothing like the wide-eyed wisdom of youth.
The only thing is, it sounds like an adult imagining what an aw gee shucks kid might say.
Theres a way in which young heartbreak and divorce can damage a kid.
Robbie and Rachel are devices spouting adult feelings in pint-sized bodies.
Truths are not more true or funny when they come from innocents.
They just become false.
Kids with powers, like inLooperandThe Shining, exist outside of this too.
Who would actually want to watch a movie about a bunch of 11-year-olds talking like 11-year-olds?
The only tricky outlier is the child narrator.
ThinkGeorge Washington,Beasts of the Southern Wild, orDays of Heaven.
Its preposterous and falsely poetic, and, to be honest, I kind of hate it.
Dispensing advice and adult sentiments is one thing.
Asymmetrical truisms and deeply philosophical, faux-folksy verses are another.
What do you all think?
