Little Women --1994

Little Women

(1994)

Rating: G

My Rating: 5 Stars

Wynona Ryder

Gabriel Byrne

Trini Alvarado

Samantha Mathis

Kirsten Dunst

Claire Danes

Christian Bale

Eric Stoltz

John Neville

Mary Wickes

Susan Sarandon (Marmee)

Who doesn't know about Little Women? The instant classic by Louisa May Alcott that some genius took and made a wonderful movie out of? Indeed. :-)

Four sisters. One Marmee. One Father, chaplain in the army. Two neighbors across the way. One grouchy old aunt across town. Makes for a delightful plot, does it not?

Louisa May Alcott had been writing and publishing for several years before someone asked her to write a story for girls. Her other stories had been moderately successful but she wasn't quite happy with them. In fact, at one point, she had been writing horror stories... stories with drugs, mediums, spiritualists, villains, passionate lovers, etc, etc, etc, in them. Then the values with which she had been raised asserted themselves and she promptly burned all her manuscripts and didn't know where to start over. But it was then that a new dawning arrived.

When the publisher asked for a story for girls, Louisa didn't know where to start. She hadn't been a very girly girl when growing up... didn't play with dolls or such like. In fact, where you'd most likely find her playing was with the boys and a hoop or a ball or frogs. She was a real tomboy. But she had three sisters and some of them had liked to play with dolls. Think of all the adventures they had while growing up. What if she wrote a story about her life? She and her sisters growing up years?

So she did. And it was a success from the first. Not just in monetary terms! But little girls (and boys!) all over the world loved this story of a typical American family in the late 1880's. And they still love it... because the values that Louisa May Alcott blatantly wrote in her story still hold true today. People today still relate to the humor and adventures and love that bring a warm glow to the heart of any reader.

“Why do they like it so much?” Louisa asked her father, bewildered at the wild success of her story.

“Because you wrote from your heart,” he replied. “You wrote from your heart.”

The 1994 version of the movie is excellent. They had perfect actors for the characters. :-)

What I disliked:

!: The only things I disliked about the movie was that it was too short... since they had to keep it down to a certain length of time, they had to skip a lot of the adventures and things that happened in the book. However, also included in the things they skip over are things conservative Christians tend to complain about in the book(such as the plays that include witches and the part where Amy converts to catholicism).

2: Also, there are a few more kisses in the movie than in the book. Meg and Mr. Brooke... Jo and Laurie. But for the most part, I would say it's not inappropriate in any way.

Watch and enjoy!