If you love Capote, and if you love his whimsical, dark, comic short story "Children on Their Birthdays", DO NOT WATCH this unfaithful and insulting adaptation. The writers and producers have turned Mr. C's insightful piece on the role of the artist in society into melodramatic slop touching on a wishy-washy childhood crush and a stale, lukewarm statement on prejudice and race. Gone are the biting satire, insight, clever language, and punch-in-the-gut beginning and ending sentences of the original piece replaced by a made-for-TV generic script and story that bare little if any resemblance to the source material.Capote when he died asked to be cremated, half his ashes interned on the west coast and half on the east so that he could be throughout eternity be bi-coastal. Though he can't roll in his grave, his ashes are surely undulating in their urns in California and New York after this disgrace bearing the name of one his most wonderful and cherished short stories.

I stumbled on 'Children' on TV yesterday. Became totally engrossed in the story and by the end found myself crying for those years of innocence lost and not sure what young Americans have gained. This is a film for those who want to look back through a rosy lens and see ourselves as we wish we were. It may not be Truman's story but he would have enjoyed it. I was brought up in the North in the 40's, 50', and 60's and did not experience the discrimination that Truman did. But for the rest--it's my mom, my dad, my neighbors and me. Thanks to the producers for breathing life into this story.

This film holds up contrasts between urban and rural cultures, courage and passivity, childhood and adulthood, other-centeredness and self-centeredness, dealing with many issues of life and perspectives in an inspiring, tasteful way. Miss Lily Jane Bobbit is an interesting character that evokes curiosity throughout the story. Great movie for the whole family.

`Children on their Birthdays' is not meant to tax your cranium or exercise your sense of adventure; rather, to take you on a gentle stroll through the (not quite) coming of age of four thirteen-year-olds in 1940's Alabama. Joe Pichler and Jesse Plemmons demonstrate some real versatility in portraying the two young friends/rivals and Tania Raymonde delivers a dose of the same smarts and mystery she's done on TV in "Malcolm in the Middle". You can take your young kids to this one. It supplies plenty of tenderness and a little slapstick as the kids and the town get mixed around with romance, snake oil, some amazingly hardy roses and a really fine old red tow truck.