Friday, October 19, 2018

DVD Review: Kit Kittredge, American Girl (dog, Depression, mystery)


Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, with Stanley Tucci, Joan Cusack and Julia Ormond, produced by Julia Roberts (New Line Home Video, 2008, 101 minutes, $7.39, rated G)



You love the American Girl book series, you have your favorite girl and era, maybe even a doll or two. Now watch the movie, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.

Hobo signs, hobo jungle, hobo stew and a hobo friend or two – yes, back in those years, a girl could go exploring on her own – downtown to ask for a job at the newspaper or even to the local hobo camp.

Yes, of course, our American girl has a dog: Grace. The given-away-to-anyone Bassett is adorable. How Grace came to belong to Kit’s family is quite a story in itself, not to be forgotten because it serves as the background to the times, the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Kit Kittredge, budding reporter at 10 years old in Cincinnati, Ohio, is also adorable and wise beyond her years – lucky, too. This plucky girl manages to solve a robbery, unmask a criminal and get her story published in the local town paper bringing in needed money for her family.


The year was 1934. Mothers wore gloves and little girls wore dresses and men wore hats. Kittredge Motors is taken over (foreclosed) by the bank so the family grows vegetables, sells eggs, takes in borders: a librarian who can drive the bookmobile but can’t seem to find the brakes, a magician, a dance teacher. (Is one of these the criminal?)

And fathers go off to Chicago and New York City, looking for work. Kit’s father writes to our budding reporter, who writes back often. Will her father find a job? Will he return to Ohio?

What will happen in the treehouse club and who is the boy who turns out to be a girl?

Watch the first American Girl theatrical movie and find out. Even Baltimore has a role to play!

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