Selena Gomez (left) and Joey King are sisters Beezus and Ramona in the film based on Beverly Cleary's books.
View Larger ImagesAlmost everything poor little Ramona Quimby does leads to unmitigated disaster, whether she's washing a guy's Jeep or rolling a hard-boiled egg against her head. The Jeep receives an accidental paint job and winds up looking like a Jackson Pollock; the egg, not actually boiled, conditions her hair on picture day.
In both cases, she takes the blame and feels humiliated. And in both cases - this is key - it is Not. Her. Fault. She's only a third-grader. She deserves better treatment, fairer justice, than she gets in "Ramona and Beezus," if for no other reason than she's the best thing in it: a rambunctious, bright-eyed mighty mouse with a kaleidoscopic wardrobe and an imagination to match.
Movies about girls are already few and far between; movies about girls who follow their own quirky drumbeats are even scarcer. In the title role, Joey King is pitch-perfect prepubescent charisma, being that rare child actor who comes across as an honest-to-God kid despite being a showbiz veteran since the age of 4. Not rooting for Ramona isn't an option and never was, not since Beverly Cleary first wrote about the denizens of Portland's Klickitat Street - Henry Huggins, Beezus Quimby and her annoying little sister - in the early 1950s.
Adapted for the screen by Laurie Craig and Nick Pustay, this new film ramps up the Ramona humiliation at the expense of the books' light touch. The plot has less to do with 1955's "Beezus and Ramona" than 1977's "Ramona and Her Father," in which our heroine struggles to aid her newly jobless dad (John Corbett). Generally, the 21st century setting is unobtrusive and in tandem with Cleary's novels - which took place in whatever time period she happened to occupy while writing them.
Because this is the time of Disney pop stars, Selena Gomez plays big sis Beezus. Her central role, which she fulfills with gusto, is to express twitchy sibling irritation while simultaneously pining for Henry (fellow Disneyite Hutch Dano). More mature brooding occurs between Ginnifer Goodwin as Aunt Bea and Josh Duhamel as Hobart, the guy with the Jeep, whose share of the script proceeds with alarming rom-com efficiency.
In a nod to the original books, Ramona's dad is a frustrated artist whose elastic and fidgety sketching resembles Alan Tiegreen's classic illustrations. Another cute touch is the use of toyland fantasy sequences - mixing live-action Ramona with animated cutouts and dollhouse figures - to capture a wee girl's outsize imagination. Both the fanciful bits and the Jeep-defacing are brought to us by Elizabeth Allen, a chronicler of mild modish girliness who also directed the teen-mermaid romance "Aquamarine."
With "Ramona and Beezus," she's delivered another innocuous film about another unusual girl, but this time, she's a mistreated imp with an irresistible grin.
In both cases, she takes the blame and feels humiliated. And in both cases - this is key - it is Not. Her. Fault. She's only a third-grader. She deserves better treatment, fairer justice, than she gets in "Ramona and Beezus," if for no other reason than she's the best thing in it: a rambunctious, bright-eyed mighty mouse with a kaleidoscopic wardrobe and an imagination to match.
Movies about girls are already few and far between; movies about girls who follow their own quirky drumbeats are even scarcer. In the title role, Joey King is pitch-perfect prepubescent charisma, being that rare child actor who comes across as an honest-to-God kid despite being a showbiz veteran since the age of 4. Not rooting for Ramona isn't an option and never was, not since Beverly Cleary first wrote about the denizens of Portland's Klickitat Street - Henry Huggins, Beezus Quimby and her annoying little sister - in the early 1950s.
Adapted for the screen by Laurie Craig and Nick Pustay, this new film ramps up the Ramona humiliation at the expense of the books' light touch. The plot has less to do with 1955's "Beezus and Ramona" than 1977's "Ramona and Her Father," in which our heroine struggles to aid her newly jobless dad (John Corbett). Generally, the 21st century setting is unobtrusive and in tandem with Cleary's novels - which took place in whatever time period she happened to occupy while writing them.
Because this is the time of Disney pop stars, Selena Gomez plays big sis Beezus. Her central role, which she fulfills with gusto, is to express twitchy sibling irritation while simultaneously pining for Henry (fellow Disneyite Hutch Dano). More mature brooding occurs between Ginnifer Goodwin as Aunt Bea and Josh Duhamel as Hobart, the guy with the Jeep, whose share of the script proceeds with alarming rom-com efficiency.
In a nod to the original books, Ramona's dad is a frustrated artist whose elastic and fidgety sketching resembles Alan Tiegreen's classic illustrations. Another cute touch is the use of toyland fantasy sequences - mixing live-action Ramona with animated cutouts and dollhouse figures - to capture a wee girl's outsize imagination. Both the fanciful bits and the Jeep-defacing are brought to us by Elizabeth Allen, a chronicler of mild modish girliness who also directed the teen-mermaid romance "Aquamarine."
With "Ramona and Beezus," she's delivered another innocuous film about another unusual girl, but this time, she's a mistreated imp with an irresistible grin.
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