Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
Dir: Patricia Rozema
Stars: Abigail Breslin, Joan Cusack, Stanley Tucci
***
It�s hard to find fault with the line of dolls that inspired � and underwrote, to some degree � Patricia Rozema�s Kit Kittredge. The American Girl dolls have colonized a nice stretch of girlhood -- roughly coinciding with grade school -- with a gratefully non-sexualized world that aims to teach a generation of daughters about history, friendship, self-reliance and respect. A cohort of 18-inch tall figures holding the bulwark against hordes of Bratz.
Abigail Breslin plays Kit, a sassy but essentially sweet-tempered young girl whose life in 1934 has gone from middle class to mid-Depression as her father loses his job and her mother is forced to take in boarders while he leaves Cleveland (ably played here by Toronto) for Chicago seeking work. Chris O�Donnell seems a bit young for his role as Kit�s dad, but he�s AWOL from the story for its vast middle stretch, so it isn�t a real problem.
In any case, at least one parent needs to go missing if the protagonist of a children�s story is going to get their shot at adventure, and adventure arrives in the form of a house full of eccentric boarders (played by Joan Cusack, Stanley Tucci and Jane Krakowski), a pair of young hobos (Willow Smith and Max Thieriot) and a string of robberies that authorities blame on the homeless and jobless filling the hobo jungles on the edge of town.
It takes too long for the story to really kick in, and as a result it never gets up a good head of steam. However, that might not be a minus for the movie�s intended audiences � the little girls between 5 and 12 who are grateful for the chance to see a world that they�ve only imagined in hours of play and in the bestselling AG books, come alive. The scene-setting, not the thriller, is the heart of the experience for them, and because of this all critical caveats are qualified into meaninglessness.
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