“The world has changed – people … used to know each other’s sadness.”

Ah, the important second viewing. I didn’t know how I’d feel about this movie watching it again. I really love the book – it’d be among the first I’d recommend reading to any child – but I probably wouldn’t have even read the book if it hadn’t been made into a movie starring Courtney Jines (maybe I would have – since I’d have watched the movie, having watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for AnnaSophia Robb, I guess). So I guess I was trying to watch it this time and view it as any other movie – book, Courtney, AnnaSophia aside, lol – and I was surprised to find everything even better than I remembered.

“What kinda tree is this?”
“It’s a wait and see tree – you gotta wait till it’s grown up till you can see what it is.”

The movie, like the book, has a lot of important ideas and lessons, not only for kids but most adults too – the importance of telling stories, moving on, letting go, making friends out of strangers, remembering but not getting lost in memory, finding one’s place – some of it’s a little corny, but some of it is also surprisingly honest, even a little controversial considering this thing comes packaged as a family movie: the pet store owner / transient ex-con Otis, for example, of whom Gloria Dump tells Opal,

“We should judge Otis on the pretty music that he makes – and how kind he is to those animals – ‘cos that’s all we know about him right now, ain’t it?”

(Incidentally, I love the scene between Otis – played by Dave Matthews, yes, that Dave Matthews and he does sing in the movie – and Opal, in which he calls her a butterfly.)

“You cannot hold onto anything that wants to go. You just gotta love it while you got it.”

I think what is so surprising about this movie is how honest it is, how honest the adult characters in it – especially Gloria Dump (Cicely Tyson, seriously deserving an Oscar nomination in my opinion) and Miss Franny (Eva Marie-Saint) – are to the child characters, and that it makes no exceptions with its “love everyone” message. It starts with a dirty stray dog, extends to the “witch out in the woods,” (very like Lori MacGregor in the similar old Disney movie The Three Lives of Thomasina, simply a recluse whose existence is misunderstood by children) to the lonely librarian, to this ex-con who we never learn the truth about, the ultimate message I guess being, “We need to talk.” Then there’s the Litmus Lozenges, an almost Roald Dahl like device, a candy that unleashes the repressed sorrow of anyone who tastes it.

I wrote in the first review about the cast being absolutely perfect, bringing the book to life on the screen. The one part I’d say could’ve been better cast is Jeff Daniels. He turns in a really moving performance but I always imagined the Preacher to be a little older, a little wiser, a little scarier to a 10-year-old girl. He is a really nice guy and that’s how Daniels plays it, but there’s a stronger sense in the book of how Opal perhaps thinks he’s a big meanie. There again, I’m reminded of how I first described the book to someone who hadn’t read it, just after I’d finished it – it’s simply a story about people being nice for once.

Very cool soundtrack, too.

2nd March 2005:

This movie won’t be winning any Oscars next year (though I’ll keep it in my personal “predictions” till I see some more movies ), not even for Adapted Screenplay, because there’s hardly anything creative about the translation of Kate DiCamillo’s book to this screen incarnation. That sounds like a criticism, but in the case of “Because of Winn-Dixie,” I’m sure anyone who’s read the book wouldn’t want it any other way. Aside from a few needless, miniscule changes (in fact, the only thing I can think of right now is a line mentioning eBay, but I think there are others), this is the cutest book I’ve ever read perfectly captured in film form.

Watching it reminded me of how I felt when I saw the first Harry Potter movie, seeing how perfectly cast all the characters were, how Hogwarts “looked like” Hogwarts, etc. Wayne Wang’s movie of “Because of Winn-Dixie” is exactly how I imagined it in my head, down to the tiniest detail.

The acting’s a tad hokey in places – AnnaSophia Robb is no Dakota Fanning (but hey, who is?), and I’m intrigued as to how she’ll do in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory later in the year (then, nobody could ever replace Denise Nickerson as Violet Beauregarde for me) – but everybody just looks so damn right that it hardly ever matters. Elle Fanning is the perfect Sweety Pie; Eva Marie Saint the perfect Miss Franny; Cicely Tyson, Gloria Dump; and so on and so on.

The reason I first got interested in the book and then this movie, Courtney Jines, is my one disappointment from the movie. She posted recently to her message board that a bunch of her scenes had been cut from the movie, and really she’s barely onscreen. Like everyone else though, she truly looks the part as Amanda Wilkinson, and I guess all I can do is hope for a nice DVD with the cut scenes hidden away somewhere

And I don’t understand peoples’ objections to the CG enhancements. They only served to make a cute story even cuter. If anything, I disliked the far-too-slapstick style of the comedy. I can imagine kids’ll get a kick out of all the pratfalls etc, but sometimes it’s just too forced.

I loved the Lawn Dogs–style visual effects illustrating wacky stuff like, say, Opal’s mom planting a tyre and growing a car etc. Totally unnecessary but an absolutely perfect idea.

It really couldn’t have been better.