Girl power, ’30s-style

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is a
corny Depression-era kids’ story
that’s not lacking in charm

by ANNE MARIE MARKO

There’s a whole lot of hokey to Kit Kittredge: An American Girl but there’s a fair bit of heart here too. Director Patricia Rozema’s (I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing) latest is based on a character from the American Girl book series which, blending historical fact with fiction, relates the stories of various young heroines during notable periods in American history.

Beginning life as dolls created to give young gals an alternative to Barbie—think Lisa Lionheart vs. Malibu Stacy—American Girl proved a huge success, spawning books, TV movies and now this feature film, no doubt the first of many. And while the filmmakers clearly have merch on their minds, isn’t it better little Madison drive her parents crazy with requests for a doll dressed like the subject of a Dorothea Lange photograph than one dressed like Cher?

It’s 1934, the Great Depression is in full swing and, in Cincinnati, Margaret Mildred “Kit” Kittredge (Little Miss Sunshine’s Abigail Breslin), a plucky 10-year-old jonesing to become an ace journalist, is feeling it firsthand. Her father loses his business and must move to Chicago to, hopefully, find work while her mother takes in boarders and, horror of horrors, sells eggs to make ends meet. When two young hobos befriend Kit, she gets an inside look into the world of these lovable ragamuffins and feels compelled to let others know that hobos aren’t the raggedy ne’er-do-wells they’ve been made out to be.

But when robberies begin to plague her neighbourhood, money is stolen from her own home and all fingers point directly to Kit’s lovable buddies, she springs to action, more determined than ever to prove the innocence of these misunderstood folk, find the guilty party and save her family’s home from foreclosure.

While the colourful cast of characters making up the boarders of the Kittredge homestead are clichéd and somewhat over the top (the bubble-brained dancer desperate for a husband, the clumsy, bewildered librarian, the debonair magician), the performances themselves are not.

Director Rozema creates a credible, if somewhat rose-coloured Depression era world while Breslin as Kit gives the hackneyed concept of “girl power” a much-needed, positive spin. Hokey? Yeah, but worth suspending disbelief for, for a change.

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
opens this Friday, July 4

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