As a kid I was all about the American Girl dolls. This is before the company was bought out by Mattel, before there was the American Girl Place store on fifth avenue in New York. There was just a mail-order catalog with three different dolls, each from a different time period with six different books about her. The dolls cost a fortune, so they were always Christmas presents, something anticipated all year round. The books featured girls getting into great adventures, but also managed to teach a lot about history, so my parents were as thrilled about them as I was.
I was too old for the dolls once Kit Kittredge, a girl living in the 1930s, was introduced, but I totally get the appeal and the squeal-inducing excitement of the new movie. Starring Abigail Breslin, Joan Cusack, Stanley Tucci and Jane Krakowski, it features scrappy nine-year-old Kit chasing her dream to become a reporter and somehow helping her family get through the Great Depression. If her story is anything like the American Girls I grew up with, the movie will involve crazy schemes, loyal friends, a fright or two and important lesson. Basically, this is the anti-Bratz movie, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
The new trailer, available right here at Cinema Blend, features lots of jazzy 1930s music, girlish hijinks and the voiceover that indicates “wacky comedy” rather than “serious drama.” Skeptics may be bracing themselves for disaster, but we all know Breslin can do charm like no other kid out there (sorry, Dakota). And Wallace Shawn plays the cranky newspaper reporter! Is there better casting than that? We can only hope hisa appearance there inspires the kids of today to check out The Princess Bride, as God intended.
Check out the trailer, and keep your fingers crossed that this can actually be a movie about girl power that isn’t secretly about fashion and looking hot.
