Kit Kittredge: An American Girl

Although I cannot fully recommend Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, I do have to admit up front, it is made with much more skill and care than I would have expected. The film is admirable, sweet natured, and certainly watchable, just not very engaging. Still, I do have to give credit to director Patricia Rozema and screenwriter Ann Peacock (Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) for not shying away from the harsh undertones of its Great Depression setting. Compare this to the last kids movie set during the Depression, the forgettable animated film, Everyone's Hero, which made the era seem like a rollicking good time with singing hobos and wisecracking comic sidekicks. Kit Kittredge is definitely a step up.

Set in 1934, 10-year-old Kit (Abigail Breslin) has only one dream - to be a freelance reporter for the local newspaper, and to impress its curmudgeonly editor, Mr. Gibson (Wallace Shawn). All around her, the nation's problems are starting to present themselves when she starts seeing the bank foreclosing on the homes of some of her friends at school. It hits home even deeper when Kit volunteers at a soup kitchen for a school project, and sees her dad, Jack (Chris O'Donnell), waiting in line for his daily bread. It seems that the car dealer he used to work for has gone under, and now he has to travel to Chicago to look for work. Hoping to make ends meet, Kit's mother (Julia Ormond) starts renting rooms out of their house to local boarders that need a place to stay. Soon, the Kittredge home is crawling with a variety of people from different walks of life, including a magician named Jefferson Berk (Stanley Tucci), a spirited dance instructor (Jane Krakowski), and a ditzy bookmobile lady (Joan Cusack). When a string of robberies start popping up throughout the neighborhood, everyone suspects the two young hobos who are working at the Kittredge house as hired help - Will (Max Thieriot) and Countee (Willow Smith). Kit thinks otherwise, and with the aid of her two friends, Ruthie (Madison Davenport) and Stirling (Zach Mills), she's determined to solve the mystery.

There is a certain gentleness and maturity to Kit Kittredge that is certainly admirable in this day and age of family films that emphasize bathroom humor and celebrity talent over genuine story telling. Despite being based on a popular doll line for young girls, you can tell that the filmmakers were first and foremost interested in making a movie that intelligent kids around the main character's age would enjoy, and that parents would not find torturous to sit through. The movie is attractively shot, does not whitewash over its own subject matter or talk down to kids, and features some genuinely fine performances all around. Abigail Breslin once again proves herself as one of the finest young actors working today, and makes young Kit into a spirited and likable young girl that kids can look up to, and adults won't find cloying or annoying. The adult actors wisely don't play up their performances, simply because they're in a movie for kids. The movie is grounded somewhat in reality, and although its lead heroine gets involved with solving a local crime wave, the movie wisely does not stretch the realms of believability too much. Kit and her friends remain real children throughout, and don't go off doing stuff that an actual kid couldn't conceivably do.

While there is certainly a lot to admire on a technical level, the film itself is held back by the simple reason that there's just not much to get excited about here. The plight of the hobos being wrongfully persecuted against because of what they are is touched on throughout the film, but never fully developed as much as it should be, since it plays a central role in the storyline. That being said, when the true identities of the thieves are revealed, they hardly seem like a real problem. These characters, who were portrayed as fairly reasonable adults up until that point, suddenly turn into incompetent bunglers who run around, waving their arms like cartoon characters. To be fair, we are spared a Home Alone-style sequence where the kids set up a trap for the thieves, which I feared the movie was headed for once Kit and her friends started following after the villains. This whole sequence is followed up by a forced and contrived conclusion where each and every person needed to wrap up any open-ended storyline literally comes walking in through Kit's door one after another. It's phony and artificial, and betrays any sense of realism the movie may have built up to that point.

I think I enjoyed watching Kit Kittredge more than I enjoyed following the story. At the very least, as flawed as it is, it feels like an actual movie rather than a promotional tie-in for a line of dolls and books. It's also an infinitely more enjoyable experience than the last attempt to make a movie off of a doll line, last year's insufferable Bratz. (Then again, experiencing violent nausea could be argued as an infinitely more enjoyable experience than Bratz...) Young children, especially girls, are sure to find a lot to like here. Adults will smile, find the experience pleasant enough, and then pretty much forget about it as soon as the credits start to roll.

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