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Abigail Breslin is a young girl who has achieved much success in the short time she has been on the Silver Screen.  Nominated for the Oscar in 2006 for Little Miss Sunshine, she has also been seen in such diverse films as Signs, Nim’s Island, Definitely Maybe, and The Santa Claus 3: The Escape Clause.  Her latest is the family film Kit Kittredge—An American Girl.

Based on the series of successful children’s books, Abigail plays our heroine Kit Kittredge a young girl during the Great Depression with big ambitions.  She wants to be a reporter, telling stories about her home of Cincinnati.  Banging away on her typewriter she crafts reports she hopes to sell to the paper.  Her dad (Chris O’Donell) owns a car dealership and Mom (Julia Ormond) stays at home.  When the tentacles of the Depression hit close to home, Dad has to leave to find work in Chicago.

Kit sees her world tumble around her as Mom has to take on boarders to make ends meet.  We get a magician (Stanley Tucci), a man crazy dance instructor (the always perfect Jane Krakowski), a mobile librarian (Joan Cusack), and a couple of former neighbors who are down on their luck.  Also the family befriends a few hobos, children Will (Max Thieriot) and Countee (Willow Smith) who are looking for odd jobs just to feed their bellies.  But after a series of robberies that affect the area very close to home, the hobo kids are blamed for the crimes.  It is up to Kit and the neighborhood kids to find out who are the real villains and to make justice prevail. 

This is a very simple film and it works on that level.  Abigail Breslin is winning as Kit, the little girl with big dreams.  Her belief in herself is just the kind of girl power one would hope more films strive for.  She makes a positive role model in a film that the young lasses should love.  It was great to see Julia Ormond on the big screen again.  Once she was the cinematic flavor of the month but now she has turned into a strong character actress.  The role she plays, the strong mother who doesn’t give up, is something seldom seen in today’s modern movie.

Stanley Tucci, as our magician is a wonderful cad, the kind of vaudeville performer that one reads about from the heydays of that form of entertainment.  He is just perfect in this small role.  But Joan Cusack was just a bit too broad in her reading of the mobile librarian.  She is supposed to be the comic relief but the way she handled the role just came off as forced.  And Chris O’Donnell was in the film so little; he hardly mentions a star billing.

Director Patricia Rosema sets a very leisurely pace in Kit Kittredge, letting the film find its way like a lazy river finally finds the ocean.  There are not big surprises here and no major shocks.  By letting this film tell a simple tale slowly it gives a pace seldom seen in a summertime film.  The detail she shows with the sets makes one believe the movie was made all those years ago.

Writer Ann Peacock captures not only what it is like to be a kid but she captures what it was like to be a kid from another era.  The story sets up its pieces of plot and moves them across the cinematic board at a methodical pace.

According to their press, American Girl is a very successful publishing company that ‘blends historical fact and inspirational fiction into stories that encourage girls to embrace their dreams.’ That is also a perfect description of this movie.  It is truly a family film; the kind of live action flicks that Disney made all the time so many years ago.  How can anyone hate a positive film that the entire family can enjoy?  In our cynical world, Kit Kittredge is a find. This is the rarest of rare, a non-animated film that the entire family can enjoy.  It has a bittersweet heart and should be seen by little girls.

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