Kit Kittredge:
0
Posted
July 3, 2008 in
Film
A nine-year-old’s escapism is her parents’ unspoken fear, especially if they’ve ponied up for a few of the three-figure American Girl dolls. Precocious would-be reporter Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) has spent half her life under the Depression, but it’s taken until now—1934—for the wreckage to trickle down to her middle-class Cincinnati family. In short order, she learns two new words, “barter” and “foreclosure,” as well as two new insults, “egg-seller” and “hobo,” (the H-word being writer Ann Peacock’s prepubescent version of an unspeakable). It’s hard to dislike a tween picture that opens with images of Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart, but under Patricia Rozema’s direction, all the adult actors are either so tapioca bland or so unhinged—particularly a straight-from-the-asylum Joan Cusack—that if the idea of explaining mortgage meltdowns to their tots doesn’t send parents screaming into the aisles, the performances will. Breslin, that preternatural wonder, exempted. The mystery subplot is nonsense and the film’s attitude to the Great Depression would seem impossibly sweet if Studs Terkel’s history books like Hard Times hadn’t already proven that in hardship, Americans were nicer. Still, there are far worse sugar-coated vitamins for today’s youth. Kittredge is a can-do moppet, Rosie the Riveter in a pastel sweater set, and her take on economic inequity is light years ahead of her classmates and her mother’s friends, all chiffon and condescension. The noble poor in their Hoovervilles clutch irons and abacuses; Rich Uncle Henry who scorns her parents (Julia Ormond and Chris O’Donnell) for saving leftovers is the real baddie. If fourth graders could vote, this film would be their rallying Fahrenheit 9/11. (Amy Nicholson)
A nine-year-old’s escapism is her parents’ unspoken fear, especially if they’ve ponied up for a few of the three-figure American Girl dolls. Precocious would-be reporter Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) has spent half her life under the Depression, but it’s taken until now—1934—for the wreckage to trickle down to her middle-class Cincinnati family. In short order, she learns two new words, “barter” and “foreclosure,” as well as two new insults, “egg-seller” and “hobo,” (the H-word being writer Ann Peacock’s prepubescent version of an unspeakable). It’s hard to dislike a tween picture that opens with images of Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart, but under Patricia Rozema’s direction, all the adult actors are either so tapioca bland or so unhinged—particularly a straight-from-the-asylum Joan Cusack—that if the idea of explaining mortgage meltdowns to their tots doesn’t send parents screaming into the aisles, the performances will. Breslin, that preternatural wonder, exempted. The mystery subplot is nonsense and the film’s attitude to the Great Depression would seem impossibly sweet if Studs Terkel’s history books like Hard Times hadn’t already proven that in hardship, Americans were nicer. Still, there are far worse sugar-coated vitamins for today’s youth. Kittredge is a can-do moppet, Rosie the Riveter in a pastel sweater set, and her take on economic inequity is light years ahead of her classmates and her mother’s friends, all chiffon and condescension. The noble poor in their Hoovervilles clutch irons and abacuses; Rich Uncle Henry who scorns her parents (Julia Ormond and Chris O’Donnell) for saving leftovers is the real baddie. If fourth graders could vote, this film would be their rallying Fahrenheit 9/11. (Amy Nicholson)
