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The Good, The Weird And The Irritating: 10 Popular Child Protagonists In Film

Placing a young child at the center of a movie is a good way to attract families with children to the theater. We all tend to be drawn toward characters with whom we can closely relate with, right? At the same time, child protagonists can tap into something deep within adults; we were all young at one point and, depending on how good our memories are, continue to relate to or at least learn from the way children view the world in real life as well as on the big screen.

[h2]3) Irritating: Harry Potter[/h2]

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There are two qualifications to this entry that must be stated up front. One: the Harry Potter franchise got much, much better as it went along, beginning with (most would agree, right?) the third installment directed by Gravity and Children of Men visionary Alfonso Cuarón; and two: Daniel Radcliffe has developed into a terrific young actor and a seemingly cool dude.

Let’s be real, though. For those first couple of movies, these kids were pretty annoying. I get that the movies were more geared toward younger audiences, but as I’ll go into further on the next page, director Chris Columbus has a way of making his children’s movies extra childish to the point that it can be a bore (I think of that Louis CK bit where he talks about how one of the worst parts of being a parent is having to pretend to be interested in your child’s boring activities).

Others have cited young Ron Weasley as one of the most irritating child characters in all of cinema in recent years, but I’d put Harry right up there with him. He’s probably even worse because he has this whole “chosen one” mentality about him that’s just unbearable at times. It’s hard not to be on Team Snape for parts 1 and 2.

Continue reading on the next page…