Ramona and Beezus (2010)

Dreadfully Boring

Awesome Movie

Am I Missing Something?

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Ramona Quimby (Joey King) is a young girl with a wild imagination. Her big sister Beezus (Selena Gomez) is eternally embarrassed by her along with other things in her life. Their father (John Corbett) loses his job and the family starts to have money troubles. But it's the kind of movie where everything eventually works out right.This is a great movie for younger girls. It's good clean fun with a couple of wholesome young actresses. Joey King is especially adorable. Her sunny outlook will win you over. And it's got the super sweet Ginnifer Goodwin as aunt Bea. It's a good movie to watch with your little kids. The money troubles provide a little bit of drama, but it never gets out of hand to darken the movie. It's message that everything will turn out alright is most fitting for the little ones.

The story for this film is, unfortunately, mostly sad. This movie spends the first 70 minutes in a variety of sad or otherwise unpleasant situations some of which are the fault of the main character, and some of which are out of her control. Even the situations which are her fault occur not because she has willfully done a bad thing, but because her energy, imagination and excitement run away with her, and as a result bad things happen. My children were weeping and exclaiming that this was the worst movie ever. We stopped watching, so we didn't get to see how everything turned out, though I imagine everything was fine by the end.The overall behavior of the character of Ramona seemed more appropriate for a first-grader than for a third-grader, but that is hardly the actress's fault.That being said, the direction was fine, and the acting performances were excellent, we would expect nothing less from old hands like Sandra Oh, John Corbett, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Selena Gomez, but Joey King (as Ramona) truly stood out, having turned in an stellar performance.I cannot recommend this movie. Please, please read the parent's guide which gives much more specific (i.e., spoiler) detail.

Early on in ?Ramona and Beezus? you come across a character mostly unused in modern popular culture ? The Decent Father. Most recent father characters fall into one of four archetypes in the following order of frequency: (1) Incompetent Dad ? Homer Simpson and Peter Griffen have influence a generation of screenwriters to portray fathers as dithering man-children ? Clark Griswald comes immediately to mind, (2) Superfluous Dad ? writers throw in a dad who has few lines, shows little emotion and are played by indistinguishable journeyman actors - ?The Blind Side? is the best recent example, (3) Absent Dad ? the father character is played as negative space, his absence a major plot point ? ?Precious?? is the best recent example and (4) Angry Dad ? the father is either openly evil or secretly evil ? an older example is ?Say Anything.? The father/child relationship has been so degraded that the most honest relationship portrayal out there is Miley Cyrus and her real father Billy Ray on their Disney television show. So even though the film is overly long, often dull and lacks a compelling overarching plot driver (there is the subplot about whether the Quimby?s will lose their house but it is half-hearted), I am going to recommend it. The film deals with real relationships (the parents fight), real problems (a record number of people are facing foreclosure) and job loss (15.7million people are facing this in the U.S. as of this writing). Let?s hope the film is successful and we see more of this type of light family dramedy.

Although I am not really a fan of romantic comedies (most aren't really funny anyway to me) I do make an exception when there is kids in the leading roles. Kids have a wild imagination and that's why I thought this would be different from the mainstream romance and comedies. I wasn't wrong about that. Little Ramona wants to help out her family who are threatened to lose their house because her dad loses his job. This leads to funny but also sweet scenes where Ramona usually screws up although her intentions are often really good. I particularly liked the scenes where she took things literally and imagined those things in her head. Yes sometimes it is exaggerated and silly but I watched it for what it was, cute entertainment with a laugh and a tear. I didn't expect more or less of it and must say I really enjoyed it. I'm at loss why the movie title included Beezus (Ramona's sister) since I can't remember any scene where the movie focused solely on Beezus.