Littlerock is filled with good intentions, and because of the final scenes between the brother and sister, the rest of Littlerock is retroactively good, but I would not recommend it. I actually hated it. In real life, I hate parties where the goal is to get wasted. I rarely drink, and I don’t do drugs. I eat. I talk. I dance. Anything else I find boring and would want to go home. I don’t need to get altered to fully express myself or feel comfortable around people. If I need to get medicated to like you, I’m going to pass. In order to depict the normal life of American teenagers/young adults in an impoverished, unremarkable town, the majority of Littlerock shows them with little to do but ride tiny bikes, have sex, drink, do drugs and hang out. What makes Littlerock more than a slacker movie and somewhat revolutionary is why the Japanese siblings are visiting and partake of the local activities when their rental car breaks down.
SPOILERS
After a bit, the brother, who speaks a little English, thinks the locals are losers and wants to get back on the original tourist itinerary whereas his sister, who only speaks Japanese, opts to stay. Littlerock feels foreboding, but nothing bad happens. Nothing good happens either. The violence is spiritual and psychological. It is emotionally evocative like The Good Doctor-the worst thing has already happened, but in Littlerock, the viewer does not know it until later when it is revealed that they are there to visit the memorial for the internment camp that their grandfather was unjustly imprisoned during WWII. Littlerock implies that without racism, life would have been very different for this young woman, and these slackers would have been her friends. The foreboding tone points to the eternal presence of prejudice now transformed. This Japanese woman is now welcomed and accepted-her past is not known, but her equal, a Hispanic man who also does not speak English, but communicates with Atsuko better than everyone else, is plagued by prejudice and resented by the locals. He was my favorite character in the entire movie. Littlerock also communicates a lot about gender roles, sexuality and communication, but those topics interested me less than the historical and haunting feeling of foreboding.