Well, this sounds familiar: A precocious red-headed girl
with unrelenting optimism and a ‘unique’ perspective on the world sets out to
basically fix everything around her. Even as someone with a higher-than-usual
tolerance for this brand of family-friendly content (chalk that up to growing
up with Mara Wilson as Matilda, I guess), there’s something inherently strained
about sitting through a story where children have a greater vocabulary and
emotional range than the adults. It’s the kind of thing that normally smacks of
wish fulfillment for adults more than anything else, letting the older
writer(s) live out their own fantasy of how they wish children acted in the
real world. But then there are films like this, which undeniably fit into this
niche but also feel wholly singular to themselves.
