Review of Ramona and Beezus (2010) by Chads. — 23 Jul 2010

Since "Ramona and Beezus" blandly stays within the parameters of a G rating, it's only inevitable that the contemporization of the 1955 young adult novel by Beverly Cleary would dislocate the sisters from their modern-day setting, especially Beezus(Selena Gomez), a girl out of time whose innocence wouldn't be so distracting had the film not saddled the Quimby clan with a real world problem.

The recession and the fallout resulting from dad(John Corbett) being laid off from his job(marital squabbles, home foreclosures) entails that the characters act accordingly to their period. When the Cleary novel was published, boys and girls in America went steady; they hung out at malt shops and drive-in theaters, and never broached the subject of sex.

That's the world Beezus belongs to; the filmic world of mythical teenagers which Peter Bogdonavich's "The Last Picture Show"(and more recently Gary Ross' "Pleasentville") put an end to, in which "Ramona and Beezus" revives, through the reactionary quality of the teenaged girl's chasteness.

To a great extent, generative naivety was largely a filmic reality(which the Kinsey Reports of 1947 & 1953 proved), a product of the church's then-monolithic influence on people's lives(see Giesuppe Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso").

Presented as a secular film, "Ramona and Beezus" beats a Christian heart. To see such unworldliness engendered in attractive, seemingly well-rounded adolescents, where a good friend flirts uncertainly with Beezus(before a lemonade stand, no less) like a nine-year-old boy stricken with puppy love, can't help but distract the moviegoer.

Maybe Beezus is supposed to be plain-looking; maybe that would have lessened the estrangement. A less beautiful actress can get away with a line like, "Who could ever love a girl named Beezus?" but not Gomez.

The declaration comes amidst the older sister's exasperation with having a sibling like Ramona(Joey King) who always has to be the center of attention. It's the plaintive cry of an ugly duckling, not a sperm magnet.

The name "Beezus" makes Beatrice feel unattractive, a name that the younger Quimbly girl saddled her with. When Ramona chops up a couple of hot dogs for dinner, the seemingly innocuous action suggests a real Ramona and a real Beezus underneath their studio-mandated ciphers, a sisterly dynamic more in line with the Wiener girls from Todd Solondz's "Welcome to the Dollhouse", made obscure by the G rating.

When boy and girl finally do kiss, it's the latter who makes the first move, which finally brings "Ramona and Beezus" up-to-date with cultural and societal norms, because, according to Nicolas Cage in Francis Coppola's "Peggy Sue Got Married", "that's a guy's move.