Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery (2000) and Child Actors

Good child actors can be hard to find.  This is something that I’ve heard people say, or seen people write many times.  People say that child actors tend to be bad.  They say that it can be hard to watch a child actor perform because they are just being children and not the characters.  It’s something that comes up again and again with the release of new movies that star children as the main characters.  For the most part I can see that side of the argument.

A movie that can help that side of the argument is Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery.  This is a movie for children that is about children and the antics that the children get up to.  It exemplifies what people are talking about when they say that child actors are usually not the best.  That is far from the only problem that the movie has, but it is the problem that I am going to focus on for the majority of the writing.

Let me first discuss reasons that good child actors seem hard to find.  The main reason comes from experience.  I think experience is one thing that helps to make great actors.  Through the years of working in the movie industry, actors come to build their craft and understand filmmaking in general.  This experience helps the actors to learn and to grow.  In many cases, I find that to be true.  Child actors do not usually have that same amount of experience as they go through their acting careers.  The careers have not been in existence as long, and therefore, they have not yet learned or grown as an actor.  The other big reason for child actors tending to be weaker actors is that they are children.  Many children are too focused on immediate fun.  It is hard to get children to concentrate on a specific task.  Acting usually needs some concentration in order to be done properly.  I would think that getting a child to focus long enough on acting to give a good performance is tough to do.

Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery has the child acting issues throughout.  It seems like the children love to be on camera.  They always seem happy to be in the movie whenever they are in it.  The problem is that they get the joy out of being in the movie, but they don’t care how good the finished movie is.  The children only want to have a good time.  I’m not going to put the blame solely on the children.  The director should have seen this and at least tightened it up a little bit.  But he didn’t.  In fact, the director let the adults act in the same fashion as the children.

For everyone acting in the film, a lack of experience in acting might have been the leading factor to how bad the acting in Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery was.  I don’t think too many of them had acted prior to the making of the movie.  It was also the first movie of the director.  The lack of experience all around could have attributed to the lack of good acting in the movie.  There was almost no experience in the film.

I guess I should explain why I think the acting was bad.  The children in Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery didn’t seem to be acting.  Now, you might think that it would make the movie seem more real.  I should clarify.  They were definitely acting.  You could tell from the stilted dialogue and blocking and such actor things.  The problem comes in the fact that there was no weight behind anything that the children said or did.  Watching the children felt like watching mannequins.  Not that the children were stiff, but because their performances were lifeless.  Yes, they could move and speak, but when everything is as surficial as in Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery, it throws the entire movie off.  There is potential in the plot of stealing a train to keep it from being scrapped.  There is.  But when you cast children who cannot act as the lead characters in the movie, the entire thing falls apart.

This can be said of any movie with child actors.  It’s tougher to find a good child actor because of a lack of experience and focus.  When a movie is centered on child actors, more care needs to be put into the casting of children.  It’s difficult to find child actors who will act, and it’s tougher to make a movie about children.  When it works, it works.  When it doesn’t, everything falls apart and the movie is a disaster.  Sure, you could say the same about adult actors, but that’s not what I’ve been writing about.  Children are our future.  How about some movies starring children that will be remembered in their future?

I have a couple of notes before I end this post:

• If you have a suggestion for the Sunday “Bad” Movie, feel free to comment below.  You can also contact me on Twitter.
• Some other Sunday “Bad” Movies that feature children in prominent roles are Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Parental Guidance, and A Nanny for Christmas.