What a beautiful little gem this film is. Angus MacLachlan must have said A Little Prayer when he sat down to write his screenplay, hoping it would turn out alright, and that he would find a cast to deliver the promise of it. All I can say is God must have been listening Angus, cause you couldn’t have gotten better than what you did here sir. Bring the tissues y’all…and your cup, cause it runneth over beautifully by the end.
We open on the morning ritual of your average family in any Southern town, USA. Bill (David Strathairn) and David (Will Pullen) are off to work at their family business, as Bill’s wife Venida (Celia Weston) gets ready for her job, and David’s wife Tammy (Jane Levy) is doing the same, but also sweetly preparing lunch for the boys. Bill’s simple life slowly gets turned upside down by his kids; daughter Patti (Anna Camp) shows up unannounced, leaving her husband with her daughter Hadley (Billie Roy) in tow. And at work, David is a bit too excited to get to the VFW hall for some drinks…and to dance with Narcedalia (Dascha Polanko).
A Little Prayer is going to make for an amazing play. At its best, the film feels like a Tennessee Williams fable. This isn’t some overwrought melodrama; everyone’s just trying to piece together what’s going on. And, more importantly, what they should do about it. On the surface, Bill and Venida seem like decent parents, clearly showing love and support to their kids. But the end result is still a bummer, as both Patti and David have problems they don’t have the capacity to overcome on their own. What does a parent do with adult children like that? Poor Bill is stuck in some form of hell, waffling back and forth on how and when to take action, so the fewest people possible get hurt, and everyone can overcome and move on. And yet, that despondence never overwhelms the story. Angus MacLachlan balances the hardships with these beautiful moments, usually revolving around Tammy. The screenplay captures the day to day emotions better than any film I’ve seen in a long time. Yes Bill, Tammy, and the others can be sad…and yet, there’s these brief, wonderful highs of the day that wash all that melancholy away, finding peace inside the characters’ hearts, as well as the audiences.
This balancing act only works if you have a cast that can ground the story so that you feel like these are real people, especially Tammy and Bill. David Strathairn’s best parts are ones where he plays the normal person inside the mess. Bill is right up his alley; you feel the anguish as the story goes on, as to what responsibility he bears on this situation and how much action he should take to try to resolve it. Inside that struggle is also just pure humanity, forming wonderful scenes with Jane Levy, Billie Roy and Celia Weston as he goes about solving his problems. Jane Levy was the MVP of A Little Prayer though. I’ve seen her play snarky but emotionally raw forever. But in this film, she has to play goodness incarnate or the story falls apart. Thankfully, Levy’s up to the task. Every time Tammy shows up it’s as if a beacon of light has hit the room, and all the hardship of the character she’s talking to just disappears. The scenes with little Hadley had me tearing up a bit, but all the little and big moments with David Strathairn are some of the most beautiful scenes I’ve seen so far in 2025, simple in dialogue but complex in emotional understanding.
A Little Prayer is going to come and go from movie theaters. But my little prayer is that Angus MacLachlan tries to pitch a Broadway version of this story. Everyone reprises their roles, and this becomes a sensation, so everyone can witness the simple joys this adorable story captures about family life, big and small.