Story
Nicholas lives with his Mother and Father and attends a boys’ school where he has a gang of good friends who are all different in their own special way.
When one of Nicholas’ friends comes to school very upset about his mother bringing home a baby brother from the hospital, Nicholas starts to worry that maybe his parents are planning on having a baby too. Somehow this idea grows and grows until Nicholas is convinced that not only is a new baby on the way, but that his parents are going to abandon him in the woods to make way for the new arrival.
Nicholas decides that he must take matters into his own hands and find a way to ‘deal’ with the baby when it arrives. His school friends rally around and together they think up a series of hilarious and mischievous schemes that don’t quite go to plan.
Themes
Comedy; 1950s nostalgia; getting into scrapes and mischief; birth of a new sibling; school-yard politics; gambling
Violence
Little Nicholas has some violence. For example:
- A teacher pulls a child along by his ear and in another scene the same teacher cuffs a boy hard over the head.
- Some teachers use a lot of verbal abuse, shouting at the children a lot, telling them they are shameful etc.
- One boy is a ‘teacher’s pet’ who is always telling on the other children. They are not allowed to hit him because he wears glasses. But he is always threatened and everybody hates him. As soon as he takes his glasses off, he gets slapped hard across the face.
- The boys see a car pull up, they hear gun shots and when the car pulls away they see a man lying, shot on the pavement.
- The boys start whacking each other with a bunch of roses in a florist and a bunch of cactus plants fall onto the shop assistant, pinning her to the floor.
Sexual references
Little Nicholas has some sexual references. For example:
- Nicholas asks his mum, ‘How do you make babies?’, and she is embarrassed and avoids answering the question.
- Nicholas is disgusted when his parents start acting all lovey-dovey with each other over the dining table. They giggle and kiss each other affectionately.
- Nicholas tells a little girl that she is very pretty and he seems to have a slight crush on her.
- Nicholas’ father has a daydream about getting a promotion at work, in which a beautiful secretary sits provocatively on his desk taking notes for him.
- There’s a lot of gender stereotyping in this movie, consistent with 1950s norms. For example, Nicholas is almost ashamed when he is caught playing ‘girl’s games’ with a family friend.
Alcohol, drugs and other substances
Little Nicholas has some substance use. For example:
- Nicholas’s mother is very nervous about a dinner party and starts drinking wine and champagne to calm her nerves. She drinks too much and becomes tipsy.
- Nicholas’s father pretends to smoke a pipe.
Nudity and sexual activity
There’s no nudity and sexual activity in Little Nicholas.
Product placement
Little Nicholas has some product placement – for example, Rolls Royce.
Coarse language
Little Nicholas has some coarse language – for example, ‘dimwit’ and ‘nitwit’.
Ideas to discuss with your children
Little Nicholas is a light and fluffy movie adaptation of the 1950’s children’s books series Le Petit Nicolas written by Rene Goscinny (who also wrote the Asterix comic books). The movie is picture-perfect and pretty with some gentle laughs and cheeky misadventures to make everyone smile. Little Nicholas is an enjoyable family movie, but the English subtitles are quite fast paced so it’s best suited to children aged 10 or over or who are confident readers.
The main messages from Little Nicholas are that welcoming a new baby into the family can be challenging but it’s also very rewarding; and that sometimes children misunderstand the intentions of adults.
Values in Little Nicholas that you could reinforce with your children are initiative, independent thinking, problem-solving, and not underestimating the ability of children.
Little Nicholas could also give you the chance to talk with your children about how attitudes and behaviour towards others have changed since the 1950s, when the movie was set. For example, the movie has a lot of gender stereotyping consistent with the norms of the time. You could discuss with your children how things have changed or whether there are still gender stereotypes that need to be challenged. Similarly, children might find it interesting to see how different school was in the 1950s, and you could discuss with them how attitudes towards discipline have changed over time.