I loved the world of this film, and the photography and (sometimes) the music. The first ten minutes or so are really superb. And I'll be darned if Hushpuppy isn't the most adorably precocious, pint-sized heroine since Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine.But as the film goes on it feels more and more contrived, with emotional highs and lows that the film doesn't earn and audiences shouldn't be expected to be moved by. In the end, the film's utopian, dream-like celebration of Southern culture and a sort of "it takes a village" communitarianism rings somewhat false.