Starring Greg Kinnear. Rating unavailable

Writer-director Ira Sachs is a kind of poet of the ordinary, a maker of small-scale films in which everyday people come up against basic problems, whether engendered by their own limitations or by outside forces like prejudice, gentrification, and real estate. Especially real estate.

His films often have a gay subtext (or text), but in Little Men, the focus (in a script written with Mauricio Zacharias) is more on adolescent friendship and issues of class and temperament that can sometimes get in the way. Meek, thoughtful Jake Jardine (Theo Taplitz) is an art-minded 13-year-old who forms an instant, but in no way obsessive, bond with the much tougher Tony Calvelli (Michael Barbieri). This happens when his mom and dad—a successful psychotherapist (Jennifer Ehle) and a still-struggling off-Broadway actor (Greg Kinnear)—leave their modern Manhattan apartment for a bigger, more rundown space in Brooklyn. Turns out Tony wants to act as well, but Chekhov may not be his thing.

The move comes after Jake’s grandfather suddenly dies, leaving them the Brooklyn abode, attached to a dress shop run by Tony’s mom, Leonor, a Chilean immigrant played by Paulina García, so good in 2013’s Gloria. Eventually, the Jardines realize that Leonor has long been paying pre-hipster rent in a rapidly changing neighbourhood. Her first response is to avoid confrontation, and then to insult the newcomers. It’s unclear what she or the filmmakers want to accomplish with this strategy, except to spread blame and sympathy a bit too evenly. The nicely shot movie is most natural when it sticks to the effects “grown-up” dynamics can have on children.

Ehle is mysteriously underused, while Kinnear is excellent as the dad who can’t quite make anything go all the way. But Barbieri, reminiscent of John Travolta in his Barbarino stage, is the spark plug that drives the slight story. No surprise. then, that he was snapped up for the next Spider-Man movie and plays opposite Idris Elba in a sci-fi western. Some dreams come true, it seems.