Friday, April 25, 2008

Thoughts On Seeing Little Women Again

The Winona Ryder version.

- The unnecessary rearrangement of scenes, addition of superfluous scenes, and intrusion of Jo's first-person narrative are unnecessary.

- As is turning Marmee into Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

- Winona is woefully miscast, Trini Alvarado looks all wrong (was she a miniature Andie MacDowell, or what?), Claire Danes is not what one would expect but really quite plausible, and Kristen Dunst is ideally Amy, to one's somewhat surprise.

- I'd forgotten how much I ADORE Eric Stoltz. I always thought he was just the perfect man for me (sorry, S), in real life and in his movie persona, though of course who knows what he was like in real life, but it was such a powerful movie persona, all those weird indie movies and of course his brilliant turn as Jamie's ex on Mad About You, another of my all-time favorite TV shows, up there with 90210, which might be considered the antithesis of Eric Stoltz, though I could have imagined him on Melrose Place, but at any rate John Brooke is not his best role ever (and what's with the anachronistic make-out scene in the doorway, not to mention the maypole-esque wedding scene--see my first point), but it's nice to see him and remember how much I liked him and wonder whatever happened to him...

2 comments:

Libby said...

I haven't seen this one in years, but for me it was all about Gabriel Bryner, who made the attraction to Professor Bhaer (sp?) explicable for the first time ever.

Dawn said...

And for me it was all about Christian Bale. Amy is all wrong for him.