![little women 2018 little women 2018](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/mtVbaJM9B20QPmZOja7WkxAXZ7v.jpg)
![little women 2018 little women 2018](https://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/hdphotos/11973/011973/011973_1280x720_84984_009.jpg)
A few years later the 1994 Gillian Armstrong adaptation was released into theaters and I knew that I would have a lifelong love affair with this novel. The story of the March sisters growing up in Civil War-era Massachusetts left a mark on me that has lasted for decades.
LITTLE WOMEN 2018 TV
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.When I was about ten or eleven, someone gave me a child’s abridged version of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, Little Women. Pinnacle Peak Entertainment will release “Little Women” on Friday, September 28. “Little Women” doesn’t do that instead, it literally dresses itself up in modern garb while failing to ask the modern questions that made its source resonate. In its own time, “Little Women” wondered how women’s places were changing in a revitalized world, and what it meant to truly let the March sisters forge their own paths. Despite setting “Little Women” in modern times, the film is disinterested in using the new period to explore the bigger questions at the heart of Alcott’s novel. Most damning is that Niederpruem fails to engage with her central, powerful idea. This is perhaps the only version of “Little Women” where Jo’s eventual rejection of her friend scans as a relief, not a heartbreak. Even worse, the romantic undertones to his affection for Jo only read as strange, considering the lack of chemistry between Davenport and Grabeel. Davenport’s frenetic performance makes sense when Jo is a capricious teenager, but Grabeel’s low-key turn as the March family’s devoted friend simply never gels. If Niederpruem’s casting decisions can be deemed inappropriate simply based on age, her choice to cast the over-30 Grabeel as Laurie is all but catastrophic. Inevitably, most of Amy’s spectacular freakouts center on her jealousy over the close friendship between Jo and neighbor Laurie (a terribly miscast Lucas Grabeel). And it’s Amy (played first by Elise Jones, later by Taylor Murphy) who steals the show, with Jones turning in the rare Amy performance that gives her spoiled brat act actual depth. Her more sensitive sisters, including Meg and Beth (Allie Jennings), get significantly less screen time, but still make off with much of the film’s emotion. Davenport, tasked with playing Jo from a young teenager to a grown woman, captures Jo’s impetuousness, but the result is a flighty, selfish take on the March sister that’s hard to root for. Jo’s massive novel was inspired by her early years with her sisters, steeped in a combination of creativity and boredom, and while her excitement for the material is contagious, her ambition remains wildly outsized. It’s Jo’s dreams that push her into a meek existence in NYC, as she attempts to hawk her book and comes into contact with handsome professor Freddy Bhaer (Ian Bohen). Still, the film is at its best when focused on the sisters, showing off their different dreams and personalities. The result: No one ever looks the appropriate age and it’s occasionally difficult to understand where certain scenes fall on what should be a simple timeline. Jo and eldest sister Meg (played later by Melanie Stone) age up, while Amy stays her younger self for far too many years. Undercutting the storytelling is Niederpruem’s decision to cast two sets of sisters for the sisters’ different ages, and then almost immediately split them up into disparate groups. The intrusion of modern idioms also stings, and it’s hard to stomach that a literary mind like that of central sister Jo March would be reduced to tossing off bon mots like her desire to “do all the things” or her confession that a favorite sibling is “her person.” Sweet scenes in Alcott’s book are now suddenly weird and outdated, and only serve as uncomfortable evidence of the film’s poor execution (saddled with a militaristic edge, the sisters’ “Pickwick Club” is transformed into something both bizarre and immature). While there’s certainly room to explore Alcott’s biggest themes in the lives of modern women, here the results feel more hammy than revelatory. Niederpruem, who adapted the book with Kristi Shimek, clearly has great affection for Alcott’s indelible sisters, but her film never goes beyond placing them in a contemporary setting and simply hoping for the best. What would the world of the March sisters look like in the contemporary era? Such is the concept behind Clare Niederpruem’s misguided take on Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel “ Little Women.” Released between last year’s well-received three-episode PBS miniseries and Greta Gerwig’s upcoming star-studded feature, Niederpruem’s debut will be remembered as a curiosity amongst otherwise stellar adaptations.