Samantha: An American Girl Holiday

I just watched Samantha's movie for the first time last night! Unfortunately, I wasn't a very big fan of it. But I think the movie was bad in a very interesting way, and I wanted to talk about it/hear what y'all think of the film

1. "An American Girl Holiday".

This subtitle is, frankly, just ridiculous to me. There's like... 20 minutes of Christmas in this film. And it's during the orphanage heist subplot, so it's not very holly or jolly. And that's fine! But I don't see why they'd advertise this film as a holiday movie, when it just... isn't.

2. Mia Farrow as Grandmary.

I don't know if she was just miscast for this role, or if she just received bad direction... but I really was not impressed. Grandmary had all of her hard edges sanded away for this movie - all of her sternness replaced with indulgence. To me, the whole point of Grandmary as a character is the contrast between her stern oldfashioned ways and her moments of indulgence! She was a real disappointment for me.

3. Cornelia's Arc.

I'm not sure what happened here. First, I think it was a mistake to move Cornelia's introduction from Christmas to the spring. Cornelia's arrival changing Christmas traditions is such a huge part of why Samantha hated her at first, IMO! I guess the film tried to replace this with Cornelia and the wedding ruining her trip to the 1904 World's Fair, but it just didn't hit as right - it's cancelling a future event vs actually changing her life *right now*.

But adaptations need to make changes, so perhaps I'm just quibbling. But even still - no matter the reasons that Samantha starts to hate Cornelia, she needs to have a moment where she grows to like her. And we just don't see that! She gives her moms veil to Cornelia, but she says herself she only did it for Uncle Gard. We don't ever see how or why Samantha starts to change her mind on Cornelia.

4. Removing Nellie From the Factory Speech Arc.

This one is perhaps my most pedantic. So I can totally see if people don't agree with me here. BUT. I don't like the changes they made with the factory speech!

I can see why they made Samantha see the horrors of factory work first-hand. And it was pretty impactful. But I think the plot really works better when it's Samantha being unaware of the world, and Nellie is the one to correct her. I think her original response to the speech is very powerful:

"It's very nice. It's just... well, it's not very true."

First, this shows us Nellie having to navigate the class difference between her and Samantha. Nellie knows that what Samantha is saying is wrong - but she has to approach this matter delicately. Not only out of her friendship and respect for Samantha, but also to respect the class differences between them.

Second, Nellie pointing out that it's "not true" then parallels when Samantha points out that Americans value being truthful, and that it's necessary to tell the truth about factory labor. It's only through Nellie telling the truth that Samantha can find the courage to tell the truth!

Those are my 4 biggest problems in particular, but in general, I just felt the movie to be a bit odd. I wish it was either more faithful OR, ideally, it was a lot LESS faithful. I wish it had taken stronger liberties in order to make one big coherent narrative. Because there is a lot to improve upon in Samantha's books! They had 3 different authors with 3 different visions for the girl - as much as I love her, the series is a bit of a mess.

And the films did make the choice to cut Agnes and Agatha, which I think was an excellent one. I just wish they had made more of these choices. A lot of moments felt like we were only doing them because of the books.

Just so I don't end on all negativity, some things I did enjoy:

• I felt Samantha, Nellie, Cornelia, and Gard all had wonderful actors - even if I felt they weren't given the best material to work with.

• The costuming and set design was gorgeous!

... I'm sure there's other things I liked about the film, but I can't really think of them at the moment.

So, that's my yapping on the film. What do you guys think? Do you have a more positive opinion of it then I do?