Children of a Lesser God

Really hasn't aged well; Matlin does a great job with what the script wants her to do, but the film forces us to experience everything she says through Hurt's character, who honestly mostly comes across as a creep. Mansplaining The Movie.

Matlin carries the film, which is pretty pedestrian.

Great performance from Marlee Matlin..

Marlee Matlin's performance was excellent. As a film though, it doesn't really grab me that much or tell me anything other than that it's hard for deaf people sometimes (as if I didn't already know this).

This isn't just a romance between a deaf woman and a hearing man, but about how deafness is more than a loss of hearing. Ultimate culture clash.

Couldn't call it a bad film, but I really don't care about the deaf "cause". I'm watching a movie to be entertained!

This was just awful. Matlin does the best she can with what she's been given, and I suppose Hurt does too, but Hurt's character is absolutely intolerable. As patronizing as the movie itself and more often than not comes off as an asshole or even stalkery at times. The convention of having Hurt translate from ASL to spoken English everything Matlin says is, while maybe necessarily as a movie convention to avoid heavy subtitling, really annoying. Terrible.

So I appreciated this more than I expected, primarily because of its interest in connection and its way of dramatizing that--these two people have to learn to communicate in ways that the other person can understand, and because of the signing, this is a visual (and often beautiful) experience for us.