Word: liesel
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...starring Liesel Matthews, Eleanor Bron and Liam Cunningham...
Based on the children's classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the movie seeks to illustrate the oh-so-charming platitude that "All girls are really princesses." We follow Sara Crewe (Liesel Matthews), the daughter of a rich British officer, Captain Crewe (Liam Cunningham), as she leaves India for boarding school in New York. At first the school's headmistress, Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron) spares no expense to put Sara at ease, knowing she'll reap the rewards from Sara's rich father. But when Captain Crewe is reported missing in action and his property is confiscated by the British government...
Many a kids' movie has met its downfall through cute but hopeless child actors. Luckily for "A Little Princess," incompetence is largely confined to the minor characters. Still, although Liesel Matthews is fairly good as Sara, she fails to maintain the delicate distinction between a girl that everyone falls in love with for her unaffected friendliness, and an ordinary Goody-Two-Shoes. Halfway through the movie, one simply gets tired of hearing her breathy voice and watching closeups of her preadolescent Molly Ringwaldesque lips, parted in sensitive confusion at the evils of the world...
...LION by Liesel Moak Skorpen, illustrated by Ursula Landshoff (Harper & Row; $2.50). A little girl muses: "I'd invite my lion to share my bed," and eat and play, and go on picnics and "we would be the best of friends ... if I had a lion...
Mutterliebe, Heimatsklange, Gretel und Liesel (German Independent Companies). In cities like Manhattan, St. Louis, Chicago, the German population is large enough to give capacity business to the little theatres which show such all-German pictures as these. Mutterliebe is a story of mother-love overlaid with Teutonic sentiment but built with less logic than most German stories; it tells of a woman so anxious to give mother love that she kidnaps a little girl. Heimatsklänge is a travelog showing pretty views of Rotenburg, Dinkelsbühl, Wertheim, and Fussen; it is synchronized with German folk music. Gretel...