Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
The story of A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett is considered one of the finest children's story ever told. In 1939, a popular film version starring Shirley Temple was a hit with moviegoers. With only a 1986 TV-movie made, Warner Brothers decided its time to resurrect the imaginative children's tale about a little girl whose imaginative stories irks a strict schoolmaster in 1914 New York City. For their modern adaptation, Warner Brothers took a risk by bringing in an up-and-coming filmmaker whose vision would change the landscape of filmmaking in the years to come. The director was the Mexican-born Alfonso Cuaron whose first film, 1991's Solo Con Tu Pareja was a dark comedy of AIDS that seems like an unusual choice at the time. In the end, Cuaron had a vision that was more majestic than any of the previous adaptations done before.
Cuaron's version of A Little Princess with a script written by Richard LaGravenese and Elizabeth Chandler, A Little Princess is a wonderfully imaginative, colorful family film that encompasses the dreamy visuals that children and parents can love. The film definitely plays up to a children's tale with wonderful stories, real life conflicts, and compassion that an audience can relate to, particularly a younger one. Starring veterans Eleanor Bron, Liam Cunningham, Rusty Schwimmer, and Arthur Malet along with then-newcomers Liesel Matthews and Vanessa Lee Chester. A Little Princess is a lush, delicate film that has something for everyone including those who love art films.
The film begins in India, 1914 as 10-year old girl named Sara Crewe (Liesel Matthews) is telling an Indian boy about a story about a prince trying to save a princess against a multi-headed monster. Living with her widowed father (Liam Cunningham), he tells her that they have to leave India since he's about to offer his services for World War I as captain. Before he leaves for war, he decides to accompany her to New York City to live in an all-girls school her mother used to go. During their trip by sea, Sara and her father discuss their late mother who also had the same imaginative spirit Sara had, which she hoped to use in the school. Upon their arrival, she meets up with the school's headmistress Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron), who is very strict and Sara learns she has to live by her rules while wearing green dresses like everyone else.
With her father now in World War I, Sara doesn't rebel immediately while trying to get accustomed to the school's strictness while seeing that not everything is perfect. Befriending the insecure Ermengarde (Heather DeLoach), Miss Minchin's sister & assistant Amelia (Rusty Schwimmer), and their young black maid child Becky (Vanessa Lee Chester), Sara tries to lift up spirits with her stories. Neither Miss Minchin nor snotty classmate Lavinia (Taylor Fry) are enjoying the attitude that Sara has. Sara would often see outside of NYC where she sees an old man Charles Randolph (Arthur Malet) and his assistant Ram Dass (Errol Sitahal) say goodbye to a young man who is joining the war.
One day when parents were visiting, Sara wonders if her father had appeared when he's still fighting and trying to survive. Then on Sara's birthday, a mysterious man named Mr. Barrow (Vincent Schiavelli) appears to Miss Minchin with some grim news that Sara's father had been missing and is reportedly dead. With Captain Crewe's assets gone, Sara can no longer become a student and is forced to live in the attic and become a servant. Miss Minchin takes her cherished locket (with a picture of her mother) and all of her possessions except for a doll and book. Sara loses hope when she is forced to a life of servitude but the magic in her surrounded by Ram Dass refuses to die inside Sara's spirit. With her compassion to help others, even when she gives food to the homeless, she finds that telling stories to the only person living with her, Becky, to be fulfilling.
Meanwhile, Sara learns that Randolph is in mourning as he learned his own son was missing and then was in a hospital. Randolph finds another man in the hospital as he takes him in. With Sara and Becky still doing chores, they learn that Amelia's repressed feelings is only comforted with a visit from the milkman Tim Winters. Sara urges her to escape her domineering older sister when Ermengarde suddenly visits Sara because she misses her stories as does other classmates. Sara keeps telling stories about the prince trying to save his princess where Miss Minchin catches them when they were bowing to Ram Dass. Sara finally stands up to Minchin where the two go head-to-head where Minchin makes Sara do all the duties where the next day, she and Becky found their room filled with exotic decorations and food. To the annoyance of Miss Minchin, she learns that Sara's locket was stolen as Sara escapes to find freedom for herself and all the little princesses in Minchin's school.
While the screenplay by Richard LaGravenese and Elizabeth Chandler is predictable to older audiences, for children, it's not. Sure, we figure out a happy ending but if you're a child, that is what you really want in and in the cases for the ending of A Little Princess, it's majestic and realistic. While the character development is fine-tuned, the only minor flaw in character development is of Miss Minchin where we never have any idea on the source of her bitterness or strict rules in which, she comes off as a bit one-dimensional. Then again, kids don't care if its one dimensional as long as she makes an eerie presence. If the screenplay works fairly well in its story, carrying it to its imagination is director Alfonso Cuaron. Cuaron's vast, eye-wielding vision definitely brings magic and life in its story sequences of Sara's stories while the looks of 1914 New York City and India are captured gloriously with his wide-camera shots and slow movements that really encompasses the grandeur of its beauty.
Helping Cuaron with that look is his longtime cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki whose Oscar-nominated vision really brings life to the story's imaginative tone. One of the best cinematographers in the industry, Lubezki brings in all these sorts of wild, kaleidoscopic colors in the film's exotic Indian scenes while capturing a sea, greenish color to New York City while bringing a lot of tone and subtlety to make the film feel like a children's story that helps encompass the imagination of its viewers. Helping Lubezki and Cuaron in capturing their imaginative vision is production designer Robert W. Welch III, set designer Cheryl Carasik, and art director Thomas A. Duffield in bringing an intimate, restrained look to Minchin's house and 1914s NYC while adding more color in the exotic story sequences and Ram Dass' Indian look that is filled with shiny colors in which Welch and Carasik received Oscar nods for art direction.
Judianna Makovsky really shines in the film's costume designs with its detailed, greenish look of the girls' dresses while helming a tight, black-colored look to Minchin and a colorful, shiny look to the Ram Dass and characters of the Indian stories that Sara tells. Film composer Patrick Doyle help brings a wonderful, sweeping film score that is filled with lush, grand orchestral arrangements and dreamy textures that is enchanting in its tone and innocence.
The film's casting couldn't have been more perfect while Eleanor Bron's role of Miss Minchin was underwritten, she is excellent in her strict, uptight performance that serves as a perfect nemesis for young little girls. Rusty Schwimmer doesn't have much to do in her small role as Minchin's sister but shines when she expresses some freedom with the young girls while she brings depth in a scene with Liesel Matthews. Errol Sitahal brings a wonderful presence, as Ram Dass while Arthur Malet is sympathetic brilliant as Charles Randolph with Vincent Schiavelli in a great cameo as Mr. Burrows. Liam Cunningham is the film's best adult performance as Sara's father whose spirit is carried for his love for his daughter while he plays another role as the prince in Sara's stories.
The heart of the film truly belongs to the younger cast where all the actors perform very naturally and without trying to overact or do anything. Taylor Fry is wonderful as the snotty Lavinia while Heather DeLoach is lovely as Ermengarde whose character develops from a bullied girl to a girl with flowing confidence. Vanessa Lee Chester is the film's best supporting performance as the young black servant Becky where she doesn't speak for a while but once she's given new shoes, she shines as a girl who believes in magic and a world where she isn't oppressed. The film's most radiant performance is Liesel Matthews as Sara with her free-spirit attitude and natural approach to acting where we believe she's playing a child and not acting like one.
While not up to par with Cuaron's 2001 masterpiece, the sex-drama Y Tu Mama Tambien, A Little Princess is still one of his most majestic and enchanting films of his career as an auteur director. Far more superior to his recent film, 2004's Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, A Little Princess is also better to the 1939 Walter Lang film with Shirley Temple in its story and look even though that was a different time of filmmaking. With a wonderful script, Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography, score, production and costume design, and cast, A Little Princess is a wonderfully lush film that families could enjoy. This film would result in Cuaron not only winning the prestigious New Generation Award from the L.A. Film Critics Association but it's the film that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling's decision to have Cuaron shoot the third Potter film. For anyone that wants a family film with a happy ending, imagination, and wonderful shots, A Little Princess is the film to watch.
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