Review of Miss Potter (2006) by Markb. — 22 Mar 2007

It's hard to believe that all those itty-bitty (and, to their detractors, somewhat twee) little books about rabbits, ducks and frogs were such huge best sellers even a century ago, but their creator, writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter was, at least from a bestseller/ financial point of view, the Dr.

Seuss, Walt Disney and maybe even Steven Spielberg of 1902. A movie based on her life would expectedly at least try to approach the question of why, if she was considered such a liberated woman in her day, her children's stories were frequently so conservative: in her most famous one, Peter Rabbit, the protagonist is punished for pursuing his sense of adventure by enduring a traumatically scary experience, getting sick and missing out on supper! It would also reasonably cover the fact that Potter also made some strides as a biologist, but Miss Potter does neither.

Naysayers could make a valid case that the film is content to coast on its surface charms, but sometimes the best way to appreciate a movie is to savor it for what it is rather than what we'd like it to be, and anyway Miss Potter has a LOT of surface charms to coast on.

Chief among them is the typically luminous title performance by Renee Zellweger, who's one of the most utterly lovable of current actresses and one who has no equal in interpreting somewhat socially awkward women trying to make a place for themselves in the world, as Jerry Maguire, Nurse Betty, the Bridget Jones movies, her Oscar-winning mountain-girl turn in Cold Mountain and even her change-of-pace role as Chicago's ruthlessly opportunistic social climber Roxie Hart all bear out.

(By the way, why has there been so much buyer's remorse toward Zellweger lately? It seems like anytime a young or youngish American actress wins an Academy Award--like Marisa Tomei, Mira Sorvino and Helen Hunt--everybody suddenly turns on her.

Zellweger is the most recent example; so much backlash has been piled on her since taking home the gold you'd think she'd changed her name to Paul Haggis!) Ewan Macgregor and Emily Watson , as a business associate whose relationship with Potter starts to go beyond business and his sister, give Zellweger fine support, Andrew Dunn's autumnal cinematography perfectly illuminates and parallels Potter's exquisite watercolor work, and the animated sequences in which Potter's four-legged creations come to life are so charming and beguiling that I wish that director Chris Noonan hadn't been so sparing with them.

Noonan is the craftsman who brought us the original Babe, that enchanting pig tale that for many moviegoers (count me in) was nothing less than the best live-action G-rated movie of the past two decades.

Predictably, Miss Potter can't and doesn't come close to equalling it, but it's no sophomore slump: Noonan brings to both movies a quality you almost never see anymore, didn't see all that often even in the old days, and one that should always be applauded and encouraged whenever it appears: a genuine sense of wonder.