Parents' Guide to Little Women (2018)

By transporting the March girls and Marmee to the present day, this earnest modernization loses what's special, even revolutionary, about Alcott's original story and its previous adaptations. When the story takes place during the Civil War, it's obvious how progressive the Marches -- particularly Marmee and Jo -- are, thanks to their transcendentalist, pacifist, abolitionist ideas. In this version, the sisters aren't modern, free thinkers who are challenging the status quo. They don't even seem to live in the real world, considering the shots of Jo in New York City don't include anyone who isn't white, for example. But it's not just the movie's obvious lack of diversity that's off-putting. The idea of Jo not wanting to marry Laurie (or anyone, at first) in order to pursue her love of writing felt shocking in the book's original era but is simply idiosyncratic here.

Marmee's guidance and teaching of the March family's values and philosophies is also seriously downplayed. Thompson is a fine actress, but her Marmee doesn't have nearly as much to say as Susan Sarandon in Gillian Armstrong's lovely 1994 adaptation. Overall, the cast is fine but not particularly memorable. Davenport is so beautiful that Amy's funny line "your one beauty!" falls a bit flat. And Grabeel lacks the charismatic gravitas to play Laurie. Kudos to Niederpruem for attempting a contemporary vision for the March sisters, but the present-day context erases and ignores too much of what was remarkable in Alcott's classic story.