Review of The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988) by Michael H — 19 Mar 2010

This was my very first movie I ever saw in the theaters. Front row, third seat from the right, and my right and lazy eyes fell under the spell of cinematic magic. I forced my mom to rent it like a billion times when it came out onto VHS, until one day I finally got tired of it and never saw it again.

Until a week ago. How does the innocent misadventures of a freckled red-haired girl you oughta know fair twenty one years later?

Not too badly. The movie is hopelessly innocent, almost as innocent as the subject of the song "Fireflies" is before life attempts to jade him. It's a children film, but it's also an adventure (L'avventura? Not quite, but possibly more entertaining) and a sometimes moving account of trying to find one's own place in the world...not uncommon to the genre, but still exemplary nonetheless. Watching the film, it was almost an index of the stuff that the future version of myself would come to love about the world of cinema...the tough preciousness of Truffaut and children, the enchantment of a bike shot by Spielberg, the insoucciance of Demy, or way more importantly than cinema, the joy of seeing a resourceful freckled faced, red haired girl take charge of her life. And, twenty years later, my own. Sound familiar Stacy?

So this movie might not mean shit for you, and I wouldn't expect it to. But for me, it's some kind of wonderful. If not for itself, but for what it portends, and for the promise to a five year old boy who should have been playing with G.I. Joes for what dreams would come.