LITTLE WOMEN REVIEWED
“Little Women” seems to get adapted as much as “A Star is Born”. We’re going to leave Gaga alone until next week. So, why a modern adaptation of the Alcott tale? Let’s take onto that. Why another adaptation after a rather successful one just aired on PBS?
I get the production push to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the novel. That being said, I can’t get remember the last time we had two Girl Lit adaptations battling out for pop culture attention.
Hell, I was stunned that Pure Flix was helping to put this one out. I guess that after you drop 80 religious flicks, it pays to roll the dice on a family film. This modern take frames the entire movie as Jo March finishing her epic novel.
We see how the March kids come together under their mother’s love and eventually find their way through a nondescript decade. Due to the lack of any cultural signifiers, let’s just call it the 00s.
Little Amy stays a preteen girl for far too long. It’s almost like the new director saw Interview with a Vampire and decided to try that Dunst model. The girls almost exist in a Phantom Zone in suburban/rural Massachusetts.
I would try to nail an exact location, but the film didn’t really bother with it. Basically, everything from their Pickwick Club to their world exists in an ideal snow globe. There is no attempt to pin these girls down in reality.
What the film does that might irritate fans is make Jo the certain of everything. All memories and flashbacks hang on Jo’s present actions. Can she forgive her sisters or the men that didn’t live up to her ideals?
There are a lot of great ideas onscreen, but nothing ever finds a sense of weight. If you wonder that might love for the story and my fondness for legendary cougar Lea Thompson will overpower my other feelings…you’d be correct.
I have sat through awful Lifetime TV programing because I buy whatever Lea Thompson is selling. Make more of this, Pure Flix.
FILM STATS
- 1 hr and 52 mins
- PG-13
- Pure Flix/Pinnacle Peak
