Isn’t she a living doll
“Samantha: An American Girl Holiday,” which premieres tonight, is the first TV movie from the WB (the WB would like you to know). This is not the American girl raised on promises of whom Tom Petty sang, although if one takes him to mean that being raised on promises is a condition of being American -- which I do -- then in a sense she is.
And indeed the film is at least partly about learning that the world is not exactly what you’ve been taught to believe it is -- though perhaps the message that comes through clearest is that, if one has to be a little orphan girl, it’s better to have a rich grandmother and a doting uncle than to have to work in a factory.
It’s also better to have a rich grandmother and/or a doting uncle if you want to collect the American Girl dolls, the semi-educational playthings to which the film’s title actually refers. Even if you are not the parent of a little girl, or a little girl yourself -- and if you are, welcome to our newspaper, young reader -- you may well be familiar with the line. (More than 10 million sold since 1986 -- a population approximately that of L.A. County.) Each doll represents a 9-year-old girl from some time in American history. Each has an accompanying series of books and comes with “historically accurate” clothes and accessories, some of which have been replicated life-size for young females to wear.
Of this small, centuries-ranging tribe, Samantha (AnnaSophia Robb) -- “Samantha Parkington®,” as her copyright owners like to call her, or sometimes just plain “Samantha(TM)” -- is the first to make the jump to film. The year is 1904, and Samantha lives with her wealthy “Grandmary” (Mia Farrow, not breathing hard) in a lovely house overlooking the Hudson River, in which body of water her parents have previously drowned. She lives in a changing world, full of newfangled gadgets such as telephones, motor cars and showers -- a “passing fancy,” says Uncle Gard, whose fiancee, Cornelia (Rebecca Mader), is a suffragette. (Though she does agree to “obey and serve” when they tie the knot.)
Samantha herself is also full of spunk and spirit. She falls out of trees, takes no guff from the inevitable (inevitably redheaded) mean boy next door, and does not think twice about becoming friends with the little servant girl (Kelsey Lewis) who works for his family, nor to standing up to the manager of a sweatshop or the proprietor of a Dickensian orphanage. She is a great one for taking matters into her own hands and for speaking truth to power, even if it means losing the essay contest.
As Samantha, Robb resembles the picture-book original -- most important for the sticklers-for-detail target audience, who should be pleased by the film’s overall fealty to the books -- and does a creditable job, though with a certain child-actory tendency toward expressive excess: She fits a new face to every syllable, as if she’d learned to act watching Disney cartoons.
I don’t suppose this will matter much to the small fry, who may even like it. As best friend Nellie, Lewis is also an illustration come to life. She’s a little stiff, by contrast, but it should be said that the grown-up actors are stiff, too, as if to indicate that this takes place in the past, when people were more formal.
Not only plot points, but objects from the book and toy line are integrated into the film, as well -- Samantha’s own doll Lydia makes a cameo, as does her locket. Adapted modern classic or not, and notwithstanding whatever educational/inspirational good it does, the movie is at heart a two-hour product placement.
It is possibly no coincidence that Samantha’s Bridesmaid’s Gown and Holiday Coat have just been made available, as has a miniature version of the sleigh Samantha and Nellie ride in at the movie’s end, for a cool $150 -- “horse sold separately.”
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
‘Samantha: An American Girl Holiday’
Where: WB
When: 8 to 10 tonight
Rating: TV--G (suitable for all ages)
Mia Farrow...Grandmary
AnnaSophia Robb...Samantha Parkington
Jordan Bridges...Uncle Gard
Rebecca Mader...Aunt Cornelia
Kelsey Lewis...Nellie O’Malley
Executive producers, Ellen Brothers, Nancy Bennett, Rachel Horovitz, Lisa Gillan, Deborah Schindler, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas.
