|
DVD Picks & Passes 10.26.2008
This week’s DVD releases include two okay family flicks: one emphatically for the girls, one emphatically for the boys.
BY Steven D. Greydanus
October 26-November 1, 2008 Issue |
Posted 10/21/08 at 9:15 AM
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
is a charming, wholesome, old-fashioned story celebrating perseverance amid
misfortune, humility and courage in the face of diminished circumstances, and
solidarity with social outcasts and others less fortunate. That it represents
the world of a high-end merchandising phenomenon that includes $90 dolls, $25
toy outfits and much more is ironic, but the story stands on its own, as it
should.
The movie is best when it sticks to
the basics: a girl coping with her father’s loss of work, the possibility of
losing their home, her father seeking employment in another state, taking in
boarders and other troubling developments. Appealing players including Julia
Ormond and Chris O’Donnell as Kit’s loving, good-hearted parents help, and
’tween actress Abigail Breslin is refreshingly genuine and engaging as spunky
Kit.
Others, including Joan Cusack and
Jane Krakowski as goofy boarders, seem to be in a different movie entirely —
and in the last act Kit Kittredge
actually becomes that other movie, a goofy comedy-mystery in which Kit foils
bumbling thieves.
Still, Kit
Kittredge is uplifting
entertainment for any American girl young enough for a G-rated movie where the
protagonist wants to be a reporter rather than get a makeover, become a pop
princess or get the cute boy.
Like their equally revisionistic
2005 action-movie adaptation Around the World in 80 Days
starring Jackie Chan (!), also based on a Jules Verne novel, Walden Media’s Journey
to the Center of the Earth, starring Brendan Fraser, doesn’t even
pretend to be anything like a faithful adaptation of the source material.
And you know what? That’s not the
worst thing in the world. This Journey is a hoot,
blending elements of Jurassic Park, National
Treasure, Nim’s Island and
other cheesy cliffhangers in a PG action-adventure tale that’s almost as much
fun as it is stupid.
Instead of revisiting the original
novel’s plot, Journey takes place in a present-day
setting in which Verne’s novel is regarded by “Vernian” devotees as a guide to
hidden truth.
The story and the science make no
sense at all: The underground world the heroes explore seems to be populated
entirely by predators who would seem to have little to eat in the absence of
intrepid human explorers, and one deathtrap after another seems to be waiting
for them in a world where nothing has ever happened before our heroes came
along.
But scenes like Fraser going
mano-a-mano with a man-eating cousin to the Venus flytrap and his nephew Josh
Hutcherson riding a gauntlet of iron-ore rocks inexplicably suspended on a
magnetic field are worthwhile additions to the world of Saturday matinee redux.
CONTENT ADVISORY: Journey to the Center of the Earth: Intense action menace. Too much for younger kids. Kit Kittredge: An American Girl: Nothing objectionable.
Filed under
Advertisement
Advertisement
Make a Donation now!
Insightful. Informative. Uncompromisingly faithful. The National Catholic Register is more than a newspaper. It’s a cause. Your support for the Register funds important journalism that helps to build a Culture of Life in our nation, and throughout the world. Help us promote the Church’s New Evangelization by donating to the National Catholic Register right now.
Click here to donate
| 
.
