Kit Kittredge: An American Girl - The Movie: A Review

Mortgage defaults, home foreclosures, car repossessions, job layoffs as businesses fail--sound familiar? No, it's not a docu-drama about the current financial crisis--it's a nostalgic movie about the make-do, brother-can-you-spare-a-dime days of the Great Depression.

It's 1934 and the great hard times have settled over the land like a dark cloud. In Cincinnati, Kit Kittredge's family is not exempt. Her father loses his car dealership to the local bank and leaves the family behind while he searches for work in Chicago, and to take up the financial slack, her mother gamely opens their large. comfortable house to boarders.

Ten-year-old Kit loses her comfortable bedroom to a renter and has to make do with a corner of the attic, where she sets up her most prized possession, the typewriter upon which she plans to write her prize-winning newspaper stories. Would-be newspaper reporter Kit soon comes to know the watch words of the time "Use it up, wear it out, make it do." up close and personal. Refusing to let tight times get her down, Kit throws her considerable energy into making sure that her family will make it and her dreams will be realized, come what may.

Based on the popular six-book American Girl series, the movie which opens today, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, produced by Julia Roberts and starring Abigail Breslin, makes the most of its period setting to present a strong girl character who is determined to make her own way in the world. When Kit learns that the Cincinnati Register will pay a penny a word for publishable news features, she immediately sets to work on her article "A Kid's View of the Depression."

And Kit doesn't have to leave her own neighborhood to begin her reporting. Her next-door neighbors' house is foreclosed; she helps out at the local soup kitchen; and she and her mom befriend a couple of young hobo boys, Will and Countee, who show up at her door asking for work in return for food. Although Kit's mother kindly lets the boys work in the Kittredge's vegetable plot in return for their meals, resentment and suspicion of the nearby hobo jungle spreads through town as holdups and robberies are blamed on the vagrants.

When Kit's mother's lock box with her rent receipts is stolen from her pantry, all clues point to Will as the thief. With their savings gone, Kit and her mom are now faced with a possible foreclosure of their own house. Refusing to believe that Will and Countee would steal from them, Kit and her friends Ruthie and Stirling set out to track down the real crooks, clear Will's name, and retrieve her mother's hard-earned savings. It's all in a day's work for Kit Kittredge, girl reporter, who finally sees her article in glorious black and white Times Roman in the Cincinnati Register.

Filmed in golden-oldie retro color, this is a spic-and-span, starched-and-pressed version of the Great Depression which admittedly comes up a bit short on gritty realism. Kitschy (no pun, um, intended), it has its over the top moments in the slapstick department, but its theme of hanging tough in tough times is a refreshing change from the non-stop diss 'em/sock 'em scripts of so many kid movies. The moments of old-fashioned schmaltz practically come across as a breath of fresh air here.

Abigail Breslin (of Little Miss Sunshine fame) turns in a perkily perfect performance as Kit, and the rest of the talented cast carries the sometimes lightweight screenplay, playing their minor roles with just the right touch of broad humor. Several featured boy characters, a car chase, and a couple of near captures by the suspected bad guys make this a summer movie which boys will sit still for as well.
As I always seem to say, the movie is good, but the books are better. And if your girls like the movie, skip the American Girl dolls (pricey) and for great summer reading buy them the original Kit books* by Valerie Tripp --(cheap and priceless!)

*They are Meet Kit: An American Girl 1934 (The American Girls Collection, Book 1), Kit Learns a Lesson: 1934 A School Story (American Girls Collection), Changes for Kit: A Winter Story, 1934 (American Girls Collection), Kit's Surprise: A Christmas Story, 1934 (The American Girls Collection, Book 3), Happy Birthday Kit: A Springtime Story, 1934 (American Girls Collection), and Kit Saves the Day: A Summer Story, 1934 (American Girls Collection).

And for my review of Kit's more recent mystery adventures, see my post of June 20 here.