Little Manhattan

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Small love in a big city, in the eyes of children.

Little Manhattan is a 2005 romantic comedy film directed and written by husband and wife Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett. The movie depicts the story of ten-year-old Gabe's realization that girls can be pretty and pretty nice to be with. The story takes place, and was filmed on location, in Manhattan, mostly in the Upper West Side. The film stars Josh Hutcherson and Charlie Ray in the leading roles of the two children.

10-year-old Gabe (Josh Hutcherson) meets 11-year-old Rosemary Telesco (Charlie Ray), a girl he's known since kindergarten. But after being partnered with her for sparring, he suddenly notices her as a girl, not another face. To Gabe's elation, they begin spending time together and he is completely enamored with not only her, but her life.

This movie contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Rosemary, to a degree.
• Awkward Father-Son Bonding Activity: Averted. Gabe and his father spend time together by practicing his placekicking. Narrator!Gabe compares their relationship to Tiger and Earl.
• Beta Couple: Inverted. Gabe and Rosemary start to get going right as Gabe's parents are right on the brink of divorce.
• Big Applesauce: Manhattan
• Bittersweet Ending: Rosemary goes off to camp and private school, but it's implied that Gabe's parents rediscover their 'spark' and his family stays happy and whole.
• Bowdlerise: The Disney Channel airing of the movie in the US cuts off most of the bad words (and one barber scene), including the Precision H Strike mentioned below.
• Bullying A Pair Of Dragons: A schoolyard bully accosts Gabe and Rosemary while they are together. Seeing as one of the several subplots in the movie has Gabe and Rosemary attempting to ascend the ranks of their karate school...this didn't work out too well for the bully.
• Deadpan Snarker: Narrator!Gabe has some shades of this.
• Enforced Method Acting: That first kiss the kids have on-camera really was the actors' first.
• Epic Fail: Gabe breaks his hand trying to punch through a wood block at one point in the film.
• Exiled to the Couch: Gabe's dad.
• Free-Range Children: Subverted. Gabe has a nine-block radius that he's allowed to roam unsupervised, which is still quite a lot for a ten-year-old kid living in the middle of New York City. He gets into terrible trouble for going outside of this zone and consequently taking so long to come back home that his mother calls the cops.
• Gender Blender Name: Rosemary's actress, Charlie Ray.
  • Her name is Charlotte.
• Groin Attack: Against Darryl Kitzens.
• Imagine Spot: First-grade boys shooting vomit as a result of cooties is especially laugh-worthy.
• Just Friends: What they were in the beginning, and ended as such.
• Mood Whiplash: Gabe gives fair warning, but it's still jarring to go from his parents' days of young love to their divorce-pending present.
• Parental Substitute: Rosemary has one in a nanny assigned to take care of her while her parents are out of town (which is fairly often.)
• Precision H Strike: In one of the ending sequences of the movie, Gabe responds to Rosemary's invitation to dance with an almost alarmingly casual, "Sure. What the hell?"
• Real Song Theme Tune: The movie's opening, Only The Strongest Survive by Elvis Presley.
• Recycled in Space: Essentially, it's a romantic comedy (and is called so on the back of the DVD cover)...with the main characters roughly half the age they would be normally.
• The Rival: Tim Staples for Gabe.
• She Is All Grown Up: Doubly subverted. She is not "all grown up", per se - that's the whole point of the film - but there is still an element of the two having been acquaintances and friends since very early childhood and the romantic feelings starting to manifest after the passage of some time.
• Shout-Out: Gabe calls Darryl the "Darth Maul" of PS-87.
• Temporary Divorce: Hinted at with Gabe's parents.
• Tonight Someone Kisses: A literal one, by Gabe.
• Truth in Television: To a degree. While the seeds of a sex drive (hopefully) don't manifest until adolescence, it's not unheard of for kids - American kids in particular - to have curiosity about the opposite sex during their pre-adolescent years.