Season 48 - Little Women (2018)
I have never met someone of the female persuasion who doesn't hold a strong opinion on which is their favorite adaptation of Little Women. My friend Marie favors the 1949 version because she's a huge fan of Margaret O'Brien of Meet Me in St. Louis fame. And I totally admire Marie's bravery in embracing being entirely wrong because the best adaptation is obviously the 1994 version with Winona Ryder. Accept no substitutes! Especially if they're trying to foist that horrible 2019 Greta Gerwig version on you. Beth isn't a framing device and Florence Pugh is incapable of passing for twelve! Why did that have to be the last film I saw in theaters before the pandemic!?! It has wormed its way into my brain and is sadly never to be forgotten because of it's proximity to pandemonium. This miniseries was the latest adaptation save the Greta Gerwig version and I had literally no desire to see it. The main reason I didn't want to watch this was because it was filmed in Ireland. I know, that seems a really weird reason to not watch a show, but everyone knows what the March's house and environs look like because you can literally still go there. I've been there, and while this adaptation might have had some accuracy with regard to the interior layout what the hell was that color the house was painted!?! Those trees, what is up with those trees around "Walden Pond!?!" Oh, and the fact that the newspaper where Jo sells her story in "Concord" is in Eliza Scarlet's office, I'm even more exasperated by the Ireland choice. But then again three of the most important roles, including Marmee, are played by Brits. And I want to make it clear, I'm not against casting Brits in American roles or vice versa, it's just that this is perhaps one of the most famous American books of all time, which wasn't even published in the form we know in England, to have such a British presence behind the scenes is odd. I mean, it made me not watch it for eight years. And now that I have watched it, there's still a disconnect. It feels off. And not just because Laurie is played by Ruby Sunday's horrid boyfriend from the last season of Doctor Who. There are views that feel more Heidi Thomas's than Louisa May Alcott's. The character I have always related to most is Beth, and not just because of the name thing, because anyone who knows me knows I hate the diminutive Beth. She's a homebody, someone fine with staying put but not being left behind and here she's an agoraphobe. This didn't sit right with me. It's complicating and belittling her character at the same time. As for the changes to the other sisters? Oddly enough I think Maya Hawke was a great Jo and it was nice to see Willa Fitzgerald not being pursued by Ghostface. And yes, I am still bitter about the lack of an ending on the Scream television show, why do you ask? Also we will not be discussing season three because who knows what that even was supposed to be. But the changes to Amy? Oh my. I didn't think it was possibly to hate her all the more but they made her destruction of Jo's book far more premeditated and pathological. Though, again, one actress playing Amy just doesn't work because a woman can not play twelve. It doesn't matter how immature she acts or the cut of her clothes or the braiding of her hair, she comes across as someone playacting as a child and it's creepy and off-putting. So in the final anlysis, yes, it's a fine adaptation, not without it's flaws, but it's not the 1994 version with Winona so why settle for less?
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