In honor of October 28th's DVD & Blu-ray release of the heartfelt family film, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, I'm offering you an insider's view of the DVD that Warner Brothers was kind enough to send my way. However, before I go into the DVD features, first I'll serve up a reprint of my original review (with bonus photos) published for its theatrical run back on 7/2/08.
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
Director: Patricia Rozema
As every parent knows, all kids ask “why” but while most are satisfied enough by succinct replies to end their fleeting curiosity there, precocious ten year old Kit Kittredge (Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin) doesn’t neglect to ask the other five questions that go along with it-- namely the “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” and “how” which all meld together to illuminate the bigger picture of whatever pops into her fascinatingly inquisitive mind.
An ambitious newshound, when Kit isn’t spending time with the three other members of her adolescent feminist Treehouse Club complete with photos of idols Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt given places of honor on the wooden walls, she wears out her shoe leather and typewriter ribbon in her ardent quest to become a full-fledged journalist for the local Cincinnati Register. Despite her youth, the tireless self-starter investigates every lead at her disposal, knowing how to handle a source with confidentiality, work a piece from a new angle, always be cautious of burying the lead, endlessly checking her facts and similar to the way that Nancy Drew was known as a “girl detective,” Kit Kittredge--to whom she’ll no doubt draw comparisons-- is a truly gifted “girl reporter.”
Based on the successful American Girl series of books from Kit author Valerie Tripp made popular in my own adolescence, Mansfield Parkdirector Patricia Rozema’s earnest, unabashedly nostalgic and sweet-natured film which was penned by Chronicles of Narnia scripter Ann Peacock announces its aims towards offering something positive for women proudly from the start over opening credits which reveal that in addition to the writer and director, there were an uncharacteristically large amount of female professionals associated with the movie including executive producer Julia Roberts, whose own niece Emma had coincidentally starred in the most recent version of Nancy Drew.
Given the outstanding production value of not only Drew but especially Kit, I’m remaining cautiously optimistic that the film won’t be buried in the wake of ultra-violent, special effects driven summer blockbusters and that it will not only earn a steady following increased no doubt by positive word of mouth but will also inspire more intelligent fare for young knowledge hungry audiences as impressively Kit seems to be a film entirely apart from what could’ve had excellent product placement potential, standing on its own as superlative and overdue family fodder.
Set during the uncertainty of the Great Depression, we find Kit’s initial goal of trying to break into print journalism through the connection of her brother’s friend who erroneously assumed the young woman simply wanted a tour of the big, bad, masculine newsroom led by domineering editor Wallace Shawn, placed on the back burner when the effects of the trying economy and era hit home as her caring father (played by Chris O’Donnell) finds his car dealership taken over by the bank and he’s forced to venture to Chicago to find work to support his wife (Julia Ormond) and family.
Not content to sit back and wait, Kit and her mother take in eccentrically zany boarders such as a husband hunting, flirtatious dance instructor (Jane Krakowski), Joan Cusack as a buttoned-up mobile librarian who’s a terror behind the wheel, and a part time magician and full time ham played by Stanley Tucci. When the gregarious and trusting Kit befriends two young hobos (Jumper’s Max Thieriot and Willow Smith) whom her mother employs to contribute in odd jobs in exchange for food, she encounters class prejudice after a series of robberies hits her sleepy neighborhood and all fingers point towards the hobos, inspiring Kit to once again rely on her budding reporter’s intuition and skills to sleuth out the case on her own in discovering the true culprits and helping to clear not only her friends’ names but also try and prevent her home from foreclosure.
Although the primary audience will most likely be young girls and their mothers, this G rated feature packs a great punch in offering viewers a surprisingly complicated mystery—including one that does admittedly seem to confuse slightly in the final rushed act when clues are revealed far too quickly. In addition, it’s filled with important historical information that definitely echoes today in our struggling economy not to mention messages of loyalty, perseverance, tolerance, justice and friendship which make it ideal for viewers of both genders, if parents can manage not to mention the American Girl book series connection in getting their sons into the theatre.
And speaking from the perspective of a girl who, much like Kit was far too eager to jump into the professional realm in her adolescence (and in my case trying to join Seinfeld’s writing staff at the age of eleven), it’s a wonderful celebration of childhood innocence and the reminder never to diminish a child’s dream, especially when like Kit, they’re more concerned with intellectual pursuits rather than begging for trips to the mall to buy toy tie-ins to other summer blockbusters. Although in the case of Kit, as an aunt, if my niece were just a few years older, I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase her a Kittredge doll in lieu of Barbies and Bratz.
DVD Features:
Winner of the Heartland Award certifying Kittredge as a "Truly Movie Picture," the DVD offers 3 formats for your viewing pleasure-- the original widescreen aspect ratio which preserves the theatrical version and is enhanced for widsecreen televisions, a full-screen edition which is modified from the original but formatted to fit the shape of your screen, as well as a digital copy you can download to play on your Mac, PC, Video iPod or other portable video device.
Featuring a gallery of of trailers from the other American Girl Movies that went straight-to-DVD and can be purchased below by checking out the Mini-Amazon American Girl Collection Slideshow I've provided, Kit's DVD also boasts features that are enhanced for DVD-ROM equipped personal computers. Additionally, the film provides English and Spanish subtitles for the deaf or hearing impaired as well as crystal clear Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound.
Hands down the best live action (or non-animated) children's film I've seen in 2008, Kit Kittredge is one you should definitely introduce to the women in your life-- whether it's your grandmothers who may recall the time period firsthand, your mothers, or for the next generation and its target audience of children and grandchildren. An extraordinary, underrated gem-- follow along with Kit and stay on the case until you bring this highly recommended disc home on DVD or Blu-ray.
Prior to his breakout success composing the score for Darren Aronofsky’s groundbreaking Sundance Film Festival winning directorial debut, Pi,Clint Mansell was best known in his native England as the front-man for his band Pop Will Eat Itself. And although he earned some cult status following the success of Aronofsky’s independent sensation, it wasn’t until he composed not just the score but the masterful track “Lux Aeterna” for Aronofsky’s follow-up Requiem for a Dream that he’d completed the work which would become synonymous with his name.
Arguably one of the most gifted and inventive composers working in the cinematic medium today with “Lux Aeterna” being used in countless trailers, as the official theme for several sporting events and more, nonetheless despite critical acclaim and awards, Mansell stayed true to his indie roots. While he’s earned enough fans that Wikipedia reported Lakeshore Records was forced to issue a second edition of the Smokin’ Aces soundtrack after the filmmaker, Joe Carnahan received “blatant threats” due to Mansell’s relative absence from the original disc release, Mansell still remains one of the industry’s best kept secrets.
Having contributed compositions for such films as Barbet Schroder’s Murder By Numbers (which launched Ryan Gosling), Nicolas Cage’s directorial debut Sonny (starring a then-unknown James Franco), twice collaborating with indie filmmaker Bart Freundlich for Trust the Man and World Traveler, it wasn’t until he reunited with Aronofsky that he earned a Golden Globe nomination for his score to the otherwise largely critically panned film, The Fountain.
However, most recently, he was offered the chance to move into considerably lighter genre territory with the prospect of composing the score for writer/director Adam Brooks’ clever 2008 romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe. To summarize my original review, the film surrounds Will Hayes, a thirty-something father (Ryan Reynolds) who is coerced into revealing the saga of his romantic life to his precocious ten year old daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin). Intriguingly opting to avoid the traditional tale of his courtship with Maya’s mother, Will crafts an impromptu love story mystery that features his associations with the three women with whom he had any serious attachment: Emily (played by Invincible’s Elizabeth Banks), Summer (Rachel Weisz; incidentally Aronofsky’s fiancé), and April (Wedding Crashers star Isla Fisher). Thus, in the end, Will leaves it up to Maya to decipher which one is her mother since the names and some facts have been changed. Ultimately, like 2007’s Peter Hedges’ romantic comedy-drama Dan in Real Life, Brooks’ Definitely, Maybe turned out to be one of the most sophisticated and intelligent offerings for adults in the otherwise predictable genre overly reliant on gross-out gags and clichéd stereotypes.
Eager to work on a romantic comedy “that won’t make you puke,” composer Clint Mansell confessed on his MySpace blog that as the film provided “a new challenge… compared to recent movies,” he’d scored, he was eager to take a “different approach,” adding, “it was just what I was looking for.”
Yet despite my deep admiration and respect for Mansell’s musical genius, I wish I could say that the soundtrack was as memorable as the film but unfortunately it isn’t. Ironically, with a soundtrack that clocks in at less than thirty-four minutes, the problem isn’t with his work per se. No, rather it’s that Definitely, Maybe’s eighteen track disc plays like a clichéd high school tease as just when Mansell's barely exited the set-up and moved into the song itself, the tune is over nearly as abruptly as it began. Despite this, it kicks off on a strong note with the album’s theme-establishing standout track “Will Hayes For President!” which could just have easily been titled “Download This Immediately,” as it’s a great song on its own.
And right away, we realize that we’ve been introduced to a softer side of Mansell than the masculine, hard-edged combination of metal, steel, and computerized techno offered in his earliest work for Aronofsky. In fact, initially, it seems as though he’s working in the same vein as Badly Drawn Boy’s score for the movie About a Boy and Mark Mothersbaugh’s work for Wes Anderson’s first few films (especially The Royal Tenenbaums).
However, some of the deliciously groovy, techno entrenched hooks, romantic guitars, and jazzy drums Mansell utilizes end far too quickly, making us crave longer, more complete tracks to revel in as a rather large majority of Definitely, Maybe’s singles average two minutes or less with a few concluding after just forty or fifty seconds. Thereby, it makes it hard to stay entirely invested or differentiate between some of the titles as a few feel like lukewarm, unfinished exercises in theme variation of the romantic motif he establishes in the first track.
And indeed, in the next four songs, “Here Comes Summer,” “For Emily (Whomever She May Be…), “April (Come She Will)” and “Jane Eyre,” he builds that theme to a passionate effect that’s pleasant to listen to as pianos, guitars, and other instruments are added in to reinvent the same theme but ultimately it still feels like it’s an unanswered musical phrase.
While admittedly, this fits in with the constant questioning the audience and Maya wrestles with throughout the film as we struggle to identify which woman became his mate, however to employ this musically makes it frustrating for listeners who want the phrase answered.
Moreover, I couldn’t help but wonder if additional romantic themes had been introduced (perhaps one for each woman) or some of the tracks which flowed into one another naturally had been joined for the soundtrack, if it would’ve benefited the experience, since it’s hard to imagine roughly thirty-four minutes of music filling the nearly one hundred and twenty minute running time of the film. While some nice playful musical exploration occurs in “Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Man” along with “Summers Over” (one of a few typos included in the track list), the brevity of the disc is bogged down as the same familiar theme creeps into nearly every song.
Although, to be fair, there are a few other standouts on the album, such as the painfully short forty second “Panic Situations” that sounds like vintage Mansell, the cool jazzy cocktail lounge feel of “An Evening At The Odeon” which wouldn’t have been out of place alongside David Holmes’ scores for Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven series, and another download-worthy, full-length track entitled “The Candidate.”
But the thing that’s the most heartbreaking is that some of the tracks such as “Sunday, Sunday” — which is staged like a rock song and would’ve benefited from a longer length and possibly lyrics — would’ve probably made outstanding songs in their own right, yet when they’re all packaged together as a whole, Definitely, Maybe’s Original Motion Picture Score mostly makes for likable background music on a Sunday morning. Needless to say, given the immense talent of Mansell, this is a major letdown. However, this being said, it did make me instantly return to some of my favorite titles from the composer’s catalogue like the incredible “Lux Aeterna” and wish that Definitely, Maybe had been given the “Lux” treatment.
As every parent knows, all kids ask “why” but while most are satisfied enough by succinct replies to end their fleeting curiosity there, precocious ten year old Kit Kittredge (Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin) doesn’t neglect to ask the other five questions that go along with it-- namely the “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” and “how” which all meld together to illuminate the bigger picture of whatever pops into her fascinatingly inquisitive mind. An ambitious newshound, when Kit isn’t spending time with the three other members of her adolescent feminist Treehouse Club complete with photos of idols Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt given places of honor on the wooden walls, she wears out her shoe leather and typewriter ribbon in her ardent quest to become a full-fledged journalist for the local Cincinnati Register. Despite her youth, the tireless self-starter investigates every lead at her disposal, knowing how to handle a source with confidentiality, work a piece from a new angle, always be cautious of burying the lead, endlessly checking her facts and similar to the way that Nancy Drew was known as a “girl detective,” Kit Kittredge--to whom she’ll no doubt draw comparisons-- is a truly gifted “girl reporter.”
Based on the successful American Girl series of books from Kit author Valerie Tripp made popular in my own adolescence, Mansfield Parkdirector Patricia Rozema’s earnest, unabashedly nostalgic and sweet-natured film which was penned by Chronicles of Narnia scripter Ann Peacock announces its aims towards offering something positive for women proudly from the start over opening credits which reveal that in addition to the writer and director, there were an uncharacteristically large amount of female professionals associated with the movie including executive producer Julia Roberts, whose own niece Emma had coincidentally starred in the most recent version of Nancy Drew.
Given the outstanding production value of not only Drew but especially Kit, I’m remaining cautiously optimistic that the film won’t be buried in the wake of ultra-violent, special effects driven summer blockbusters and that it will not only earn a steady following increased no doubt by positive word of mouth but will also inspire more intelligent fare for young knowledge hungry audiences as impressively Kit seems to be a film entirely apart from what could’ve had excellent product placement potential, standing on its own as superlative and overdue family fodder.
Set during the uncertainty of the Great Depression, we find Kit’s initial goal of trying to break into print journalism through the connection of her brother’s friend who erroneously assumed the young woman simply wanted a tour of the big, bad, masculine newsroom led by domineering editor Wallace Shawn, placed on the back burner when the effects of the trying economy and era hit home as her caring father (played by Chris O’Donnell) finds his car dealership taken over by the bank and he’s forced to venture to Chicago to find work to support his wife (Julia Ormond) and family. Not content to sit back and wait, Kit and her mother take in eccentrically zany boarders such as a husband hunting, flirtatious dance instructor (Jane Krakowski), Joan Cusack as a buttoned-up mobile librarian who’s a terror behind the wheel, and a part time magician and full time ham played by Stanley Tucci. When the gregarious and trusting Kit befriends two young hobos (Jumper’s Max Thieriot and Willow Smith) whom her mother employs to contribute in odd jobs in exchange for food, she encounters class prejudice after a series of robberies hits her sleepy neighborhood and all fingers point towards the hobos, inspiring Kit to once again rely on her budding reporter’s intuition and skills to sleuth out the case on her own in discovering the true culprits and helping to clear not only her friends’ names but also try and prevent her home from foreclosure.
Although the primary audience will most likely be young girls and their mothers, this G rated feature packs a great punch in offering viewers a surprisingly complicated mystery—including one that does admittedly seem to confuse slightly in the final rushed act when clues are revealed far too quickly. In addition, it’s filled with important historical information that definitely echoes today in our struggling economy not to mention messages of loyalty, perseverance, tolerance, justice and friendship which make it ideal for viewers of both genders, if parents can manage not to mention the American Girl book series connection in getting their sons into the theatre.
And speaking from the perspective of a girl who, much like Kit was far too eager to jump into the professional realm in her adolescence (and in my case trying to join Seinfeld’s writing staff at the age of eleven), it’s a wonderful celebration of childhood innocence and the reminder never to diminish a child’s dream, especially when like Kit, they’re more concerned with intellectual pursuits rather than begging for trips to the mall to buy toy tie-ins to other summer blockbusters. Although in the case of Kit, as an aunt, if my niece were just a few years older, I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase her a Kittredge doll in lieu of Barbies and Bratz.
In this Sundance sleeper that delighted and attracted audiences with its ingenuity and the fact that they just don’t make enough intelligent comedic films for adults, the popular topics of familial dysfunction and the American road trip are explored to great effect. Caring mother Toni Collete and motivational speaker Greg Kinnear play two New Mexico parents who pack up their family in an old yellow VW bus and head to California in order to make a girl’s beauty pageant aptly titled Little Miss Sunshine. Coming along for the ride are Colette’s brother, the recently depressed gay Proust scholar, who tried to commit suicide after losing his love, job and genius grant; a heroin snorting grandfather recently kicked out of his retirement community where he was the bachelor of the ball; a young girl with beauty queen dreams, and her brother who, in reverence to Frederic Nietzsche, has taken a vow of silence until he becomes an air force pilot. Darkly hilarious and heartfelt, it starts off with eccentric quirks for quirk sake and foul language guaranteed to shock and awe but breaks out from the pack of typical suburban dysfunction tales as the family gets further away from their home. Alan Arkin as the grandfather and Steve Carell, playing against type as the sad-faced melancholic uncle, steal the show-- the jokes are smart, work well, and the film makes you squirm and giggle at the same time. At its heart the film is a family comedy comprised of feel good fun with an underdog “never give up” message hiding in a rated R package.
Walking Movie Encyclopedia at Film Intuition; 3-Time National Award Winning Scribe; Film Reviewer; "Watch With Jen" Podcast Host; Screenwriter; Movie Discussion Host; BA in Film Studies & Communication.
