Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oh Gosh and Golly It's Molly!, December 14, 2006
My daughter and I anxiously awaited the premiere of "Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front" and we were not disappointed. The story centers around young Molly McIntire in the small midwestern town of Jefferson, Illinois in the mid 1940's as the United States has just entered World War II. Molly's neat,predictable world rapidly changes overnight once the USA enters World War II. Dr. McIntire, Molly's dad enlists in the army and is sent overseas to London, England where help is needed the most. Molly's mother takes a job at the local aircraft plant to make ends meet financially leaving the McIntire children in the care of a neighbor, Mrs. Gilford. Molly's family takes in a 10 year old refugee from London named Emily while Miss Campbell, Molly's teacher looses her fiance' during a bombing in London. Through all the changes and adjustments Molly keeps a positive attitude and a determined spirit which was the backbone of America's homefront. This is a movie your whole family will enjoy!
As a side note our family is anticipating next years American Girl movie which will be "Kit" and will be produced by Walden Media.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
can't help but being a little disappointed by the changes they made, December 5, 2006
This American Girl movie is my least favorite. Anytime a book is made into a movie you should expect the screenwriters to make a few changes from the book, but this movie seemed to stray too much from the original written books. Molly's dad is at home at the beginning of the movie; in the book he is already gone. Molly has a younger brother in the books; he isn't in the movie. And as a previous reviewer stated, the whole ending scene was just *wrong*. Molly's dad was supposed to come home, not to her show. She wasn't even IN the show in the book. But, the folks at American Girl want to sell tie-in products to the movie, so they have a new stage, theater seats, Miss Victory dance costumes for Molly and Emily, etc. I do like how they portrayed Emily and told her story, but again Emily was a much more minor character in the books than she is in the movie (again, there's a new Emily doll for sale at AG so naturally they need to push her significance in Molly's life). Many many other parts were changed, mom's a factory worker in the movie vs a Red Cross volunteer in the books, Mrs. Gilford was always their housekeeper, not just after Mom went to work; little things that just seemed annoying.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A disappointed Molly fan, December 5, 2006
I've been a fan of American Girl books for nearly 20 years, and Molly has always been my favorite character. Sadly, this movie does away with all of the magic of the books. Molly is no longer bad at math. Instead, she's a spelling whiz. Her brother Brad is gone, and Miss Gilford is a neighbor rather than a housekeeper. Most of the endearing scenes and story-lines in Molly's books are left out (such as Molly and her siblings getting a tree, camping, her birthday, their snowball fight, school Lend a Hand projects, finding Dad's package and hiding it, Molly and her friends trying to give her a perm, Halloween . . . the list goes on), while some that weren't necessary are disproportionately expanded upon, such as Emily's. It would be easier for diehard Molly fans to point out what is the same between books and movie, rather than what is not, since the two hardly resemble one another. Only the turnip scene is here.
On its own, as a movie, it's also somewhat of a disappointment. The two people I watched it with didn't know anything about Molly. One struggled not to fall asleep while the other read and made phone calls. The movie is presented in a series of vignettes that are hardly connected to one another, with a trauma about Dad added to the end of the movie in order to give some semblance of a typical climax and resolution storyline. Rather than being a movie about Molly, however, Miss Campbell, Dad, and Emily get a lot of attention throughout. It seems to be a movie without a focus, searching around for a plot. It also seems dark, which is in contrast to Molly's books. Yet all the positive things that happen in the movie are things Molly could have only dreamed about in her books, such as truly getting to play Miss Victory, having her dad witness her performance, and yes--her hair can even hold a curl. It's almost as if poor Molly has been trapped in an alternate universe, where everything that didn't happen in her books happens in the movie, and vice versa. This should prove quite discombobulating for Molly fans!
On a positive note, the movie has wonderful sets and period music, such as Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy by the Andrews Sisters, and a fun jitterbug scene. Despite that, unfortunately, Molly's movie is not the best out of the offerings from American Girl.
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