Review of A Little Princess (1995) by Sherry L — 15 Jun 2011

God should know that there are few things that annoy me as much as when people do remakes of classics, hoping to ride on that old classic's success and make money for their (often not as good) own flick. Of course it shouldn't be any patent on stories, that if anything would be absurd, but you know what I mean! When you watch a remake of an excellent classic and you feel that the filmmakers didn't even try to make the remake good...

I thought I should for instance show an example of a very good remake of an mediocre classic, The Little Princess. Yeah, I know, the title sounds cheesy, but if you still have your "childish" sense of mind handy and can watch children's movies and animation now and then (like I do), please give this movie a chance! Watch it with your kids, young relatives or alone.

It's the early 20th century, the story is about Sarah, a girl with english ascent who lives with her father in India. They are living a very idyllic and peaceful life there, until the father is drafted for the Great World War. Sarah's mother is dead since many years, so Sarah's father has to send Sarah to an exclusive girl school in England while he is serving his country. The girl is very privileged since the father has quite a fortune, so she gets the finest room, and gets special treatment from the teachers at the school. Despite all that Sarah is not the spoiled brat you could expect of a girl in her shoes, but just the contrary! She loves sharing her things and stories from India to the other girls. And she soon befriends the colored little girl, Betsy who works as a housemaid and cleaner at the school, and lives on the cold attic. Sarah disobeys the teachers strict orders for not speaking to Betsy, and even goes and sees her at the attic regularly.

Sarah's situation however is drastically changed when she gets a letter that her father is missing in battle. Now, officially beeing an orphan, the teachers can't let Sarah beeing taught there anymore, but for showing her "mercy" they lets her work on the school with Betsy and live on the attic.

She has no choice but to adapt into her new living with the lowest social status possible, but she keeps on dreaming and is certain that her father is still alive somewhere.

The description of "Sarah" might sound very cheesy and unnatural but I think the portrayal of her is very convincing and didn't even once found her annoying (like I have a tendency to do when the character is overly "angelic", if you know what I mean). The cinamathography and the direction by Alfonso Cuarón is absolutely breathtaking!

Try to forget the terrible deeds that the english imperalism brought on, just for a moment and accept that this whole story is through the eyes of a little girl. Many great classic childrens book were written by this time in the shadow of the imperalism like Rudyard Kipling's books and Secret Garden among others.

The perfect family movie!