Little Women

Just a really great movie! I didn't know anything about the original Louisa May Alcott novel and haven't seen any of the other six (!) film adaptations. 2019's 'Little Women' evidently makes for the perfect introduction to this story. All events here are nicely portrayed, I found the pacing a little slow in the beginning as well as some tiny timeline issues, but once things get going it's very much a pleasant watch. It's a really touching and, in the end, surprisingly wholesome movie, I was waiting for exaggerated drama and antagonists to appear but they never really come, which is quite refreshing. The cast is stacked. Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh are the obvious standouts, though the likes of Timothée Chalamet, Emma Watson, Eliza Scanlen and Meryl Streep all stick out in my memory too. My only criticism would be how the sisters don't always act how the look, a very quick glance at Wikipedia suggests the sisters in the book are all under-16 but visually here they don't seem that young; so there are some moments where you have adults acting like 14 year olds, which is a bit odd. This isn't a major criticism of mine, mind.

It's Little Women... with "modern sensibilities" and that should be enough of a warning... which is odd given that the novel, and even the 1994 movie both had feminist ideals. But then they weren't made for "modern audiences," so they have more of a focus on characters and story than pushing "The Message." And that was the issue here, yet again "THE MESSAGE" was the most important part of the movie, and to make sure you understood that the characters were, well caricatured, some of them reduced even further to nothing but cliches. The plot was... rushed. It seemed to want to jump from message to message rather than tell a cohesive narrative and because of that one of the saddest parts of the novel was almost laughable, almost comedic in this version, most like because it really didn't fit with The Message and needed to be rushed. And the same thing happened with the dialogue, it was rushed, clipped, and meaningless unless pushing, you guessed it, The Message. The result was that there is little in the way of character development, you can't really get attached to anyone, they have little personality compared to the other adaptations and the source material, but then you get the feeling that this version wasn't about the sisters, it was about the politics that appeal to the "Modern Audience." And that is a shame, because the modern reader still picks up Little Women and loves it because of the March sisters and not because of "Modern Sensibilities." But, hey, kudos for not race swapping.

Full review: https://www.tinakakadelis.com/beyond-the-cinerama-dome/2021/12/28/great-or-nothing-little-women-2019-review Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s timeless novel, _Little Women_, feels like coming home. It’s the sort of movie that surrounds the audience with feelings of warmth and comfort. This feeling comes from the coziness of the cabin the March family resides in, the love that exudes from the performances, and the treatment of the source material, which was clearly a formative book for Gerwig. She approaches this retelling with a few small updates and a great reverence for the original.