Sunday, June 22, 2008 | A+E, Movies, Reviews
‘Kit Kittredge’ a pleasant cure for Depression

 

Courtesy of Picturehouse
Abigail Breslin in “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl”

“KIT KITTREDGE: AN AMERICAN GIRL”
Abigail Breslin, Stanley Tucci
Directed by Patricia Rozema
Rated G
Regal North Point 8

 

A perfect movie for a recession, “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl,” set during the Great Depression, gives American girls and boys a taste of what lies ahead if gas, groceries and electricity keep going through the roof.

It’s 1934. Kit (Abigail Breslin) is 10 and wants to be a reporter, but Mr. Gibson (Wallace Shawn), editor of the Cincinnati Register, won’t take her seriously. Kit lives a comfortable middle-class existence with her parents (Julia Ormond and Chris O’Donnell). The Kittredges are compassionate when their next-door neighbors lose their house, and hire young drifters Will (Max Theriot) and Countee (Willow Smith) to work for food, even though they continue to sleep in a tent in the Hobo Jungle.

When the family falls on hard times, Dad goes to Chicago to look for work and Mom takes in a colorful array of boarders: Mrs. Howard (Glenne Headly) and her son Stirling (Zach Mills), dance instructor Miss Dooley (Jane Krakowski), mobile librarian Miss Bond (Joan Cusack) and magician Jefferson J. Berk (Stanley Tucci). Kit adjusts, even when Mom makes her a new dress from a feed sack.

People in need of a scapegoat blame the hobos for everything. When some are charged with a series of robberies, Kit turns into Nancy Drew—or at least an investigative reporter—to try to prove them innocent.

Although “Kit Kittredge” is tied in with the mammoth “American Girl” merchandising juggernaut, it doesn’t play like a long commercial and works perfectly well for the uninitiated as a G-rated family drama. It’s not real enough to be depressing, but it makes an old story seem new and fresh. 3 STARS—Steve Warren