At the risk of calling out the social services bloodhounds, let me tell you about an experiment I recently performed on my 9-year-old son. I suppose I'd better explain upfront that the nature of this little research project was entirely benign and in no way involved pharmaceutical prototypes, sleep deprivation, electrodes or anything else that might contribute to a youngster becoming a serial killer or career politician in later life.
All I did was bring the boy to a G-rated movie — albeit one that appeared to be aimed at young girls. The movie is called Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, and it's the first feature film inspired by the mighty American Doll franchise, creators of an enormously popular line of dolls representing characters from different periods in American history. This female-centric empire is also responsible for a series of books featuring those same living dolls, plucky little heroines all — one of whom, you guessed it, is Kit Kittredge.
I knew the movie's background going in and my son did not, so I suppose my initial impulse in bringing him along might have been just a tad less than completely above board. Then again, I had recently suffered through Sex and the City, so you'll have to cut me some slack — at the time, it must have seemed somehow fitting that the fruit of my loins join me in what I imagined might likely be a pre-teen version of that film.
But my experiment evolved into something more civilized, and more ambitious, and I wound up inviting a mixed group of four girls and four boys, all aged 6 to 9 — the plan being to incorporate their responses to Kit Kittredge in my coverage. I'll get to the kids' reactions momentarily, but for now let me just say that this adult found Kit Kittredge to be a surprisingly classy and, dare I say it, literate production — a little dry here and there but a handsome, wholesome period piece that knows when to compensate with a kid-friendly gesture like a misbehaving monkey or a climactic, slapstick-heavy chase through the woods.
The movie is set during The Great Depression, and stars Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin as the 10-year-old heroine, a resourceful imp who papers her bedroom with photos of Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt, and dreams of being a reporter for a big daily newspaper. Kit belongs to a nice, upper-middle-class family, but the movie lets us know straight away that there's trouble in paradise — after a series of foreclosures in the girl's upscale Cincinnati neighborhood, kind-hearted Kit winds up volunteering in a soup kitchen, where she discovers her own mortified father (Chris O'Donnell) among the fallen.
Kit Kittredge doesn't shy away from troubling topics like kids coping with vanishing social status or fathers deserting families they can no longer support, and Kit's dad is soon off to the nearest big city to look for work. This leaves Kit and her brave-faced mother (Julia Ormond) taking in boarders to make ends meet, and their home soon transforms into a colorful commune populated by a kooky dance instructor (Jane Krakowski), a driving-impaired librarian (Joan Cusack) and a professional magician (Stanley Tucci). The final additions to Kit's surrogate family are a couple of homeless kids (introduced via a telling close-up of their frayed shoes), taken in despite a rising national tide of anti-transient sentiment. "When times are tough, people like to blame someone," understates wise-beyond-her-years Kit, "and hobos are just easy targets, I guess."
The movie repeatedly underscores the fragility of prosperity (now a timelier notion than ever), making it clear that its reviled hobos could, in fact, be any of us — from ex-crop sharers to businessmen formerly at the top of the economic food chain — as the film fleshes out its poignant essaying of life in the 1930s. Meanwhile, Kit drags her pals along to hobo encampments (where the kids put together impromptu photo essays) and winds up searching for stolen loot during the Nancy Drew mystery the movie becomes during its whiz-bang finale.
It's worth noting that Sterling (Zach Mills), the single male member of Kit's crew, turns out to be the biggest wuss on the screen and, in a witty role reversal, winds up being the one doing the fainting every time danger presents itself. ("He's a big girly girl," huffed the little boy seated next to me, uncertain whether to laugh or cry.) As for the decidedly gender-specific reactions of my young companions, all of the girls gave the movie the highest possible ratings, and all the boys claimed that they hated it beyond words.
I say "claimed" because I couldn't help noticing that, while the girls mostly gazed raptly at the screen during the movie, the boys would squirm and periodically whisper to one another, confirming, encouraging and attempting to one-up each other's supposed dislike for what they were seeing. The one boy who seemed to initially like the movie — the youngest of them, not uncoincidentally — eventually succumbed to post-screening peer pressure shortly after my own hellacious progeny loudly declared, "This should have been in a history class, not a movie theater!"
Swayed, the youngest boy cheerfully agreed the movie could have used "more violence," and then, finally feeling the spirit, confided that not only did he think Indiana Jones would win in a fight with Kit Kittredge, but that he also preferred Indy's fashion sense to Kit's. The 9-year-old girls in the group all smiled knowingly, rolled their eyes and then went back to discussing the role models and life lessons in Kit Kittredge, a movie for children who like to think, even if they won't admit it.
