Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 20, 1995 TAG: 9505220031
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Based on the famous novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the film looks like a storybook - complete with vividly colorized Indian story sequences - and has the pace of a real page-turner.
The movie marks the American film debut of director Alfonso Cuaron, but the cinematographer is Emmanuel Lubezki, who directed the photography of "Like Water for Chocolate." Together, they create a straightforward but visually elegant film that offers all the elements that children (and adults) love in a story: magic, suspense, a villain so mean she makes Cruella DeVille look like a mere bad driver, and a totally satisfying resolution.
If you don't have a child who wants to go this movie, find one you can take.
The movie begins with the quintessential opening lines, "A very long time ago, there lived a beautiful princess in a mystical land named India." But the "princess" telling this story is a little girl named Sara (Liesel Matthews, in a debut), who is living with her widowed father - a British officer - in India in great luxury and happiness. World War I intervenes, and Sara must be shipped off to New York so that her father (Liam Cunningham) can join the war effort.
From the get-go, Miss Minchin's School for Girls looks ominous, mainly owing to the terrifying presence of its namesake headmistress (Eleanor Bron). With her skunk-striped dye job and confident, horrible French, Miss Minchin aims to intimidate. Self-assured little Sara is made of stronger stuff than that, however, and it isn't long before becomes the target of the jealous Miss Minchin, who tells her that she has lost everything she has in the world.
Everything except her powerful and comforting imagination and her conviction that "all little girls are princesses" (read that "goddesses" in the context of this movie) no matter what their gifts, no matter what their circumstances.
And there isn't a little girl in the world who doesn't need to hear that a couple hundred times in her lifetime.
\ A Little Princess ***1/2
A Warner Bros. release, showing at Valley View Mall 6 and Salem Valley 8. Rated G, 98 minutes.
by CNB