Please don't bother

Rating: 2/10 (18 August 2013)

I really REALLY wanted to like this film. And for the first half hour or so I did, and thought I'd found a real gem. I was all set to add it to my review blog as a recommendation. But then it just all went to hell in a handbag.
****major spoilers ahead
Many reviews have already covered the sheer stupidity of the characters actions in this flick as well as the unrealistic (non-existent) adoption process and other glaring gigantic holes in the plot so I wont cover too much in my review. I will mention just one as an example. When the idiot dad finally discovers the pictures on the wall, especially of the house burning, does he do the sensible thing (ie grab the youngest daughter and get the *** out of the house?) No... he decides to take all the pictures off the wall and gaze at all the gruesome images a while then wanders vaguely off downstairs AWAY from the youngest child's room. Then he sees sparks flying from a destroyed fuse box and STILL doesn't get it. Seriously... the man deserved to die, even if he died at the hands of a tiny person he could have smacked unconscious with one hit. I mean come on. She was a teeny tiny woman. How could she over-power a big man like him just by sitting on him? Rubbish. None of the characters were likable enough for me to be concerned about their fates except maybe the littlest kid. She was cute and she was the only character in the entire film who had any smarts(apart from the Orphan herself).
With a lot more thought and less lazy writing/reliance on cliché/underestimating the audience's intelligence this could have been a cracker of a movie. I longed for something to happen that wasn't predictable and stupid. Anything!! But sadly it just got worse and worse.
We can all forgive a few plot holes in movies, but when there are so many and so serious it completely destroys the movie. And that's what happened here. I thoroughly enjoyed the acting of the two girls, both young actors did a fantastic job, especially Isabelle Furhrman. But there was nothing else to praise in this sad disappointing result of a story that could have and should have been done so much better.
DOn't bother with it. You've seen it all before, done a lot better. The ONLY reason to watch it would be to see how great Isabelle Furhrman's acting was - my rating of 2 points is for that alone. Not sure that's enough to justify 2 hours of excruciating boredom tho.