Rating: 
Summary: BBC did it better.
Review: This is a classic children's book that is definitely more appealing to girls since they are the focus of the story, but that has a worthwhile message for anyone. There have been several film versions of this movie made but so far the best one that I have seen is the BBC version. The Warner Bros. version is notable for its dramatization of Sara's stories which are very stylized and lavish and focus on the folktales of Krishna, Vishnu and the like. That is the one aspect of this movie which makes it special besides a brief scene of Sara's childhood in India. However, I felt that changing the nationality of Sara, the oversimplification of Miss Minchin as a classic Hollywood bad guy with no redeeming qualities, and the pathetic slapstick romance of her sister Amelia detracted greatly from the overall story.
Most importantly of all, the focus of this movie on the supposition that "All girls are really princesses." undermined what I have always felt was this story's greatest strength. Sara treated everyone as equals and rose above her difficulties because of her belief in herself. She voiced this belief in terms of being a princess but the basis was really that if someone is special and has advantages then they have a responsibility to those around them to treat them fairly and to share those advantages whenever possible. Someone who is truly special does not need to belittle others and can trust themselves to handle whatever life may give them. Saying that "All girls are really princesses." is something which, in my opinion, hands worth to people on the basis of merely being female and thus removes the necessary value of the need to earn that privilege. It is a syrupy sentiment that says that females are special because they are female, a supposition which has been a part of the whole "project self-esteem" debacle and its feminist counterpart. A more useful idea, I believe, is that all people are capable of being special and have special qualities within them which, if they develop them and work to make the best use of them, will naturally help them to create the person they want to be. I think that the BBC version of this movie handles that aspect of the story much better than this one does.
Rating: 
Summary: A great movie
Review: This movie reminded me of how everyone is special in the world, and how the world isn't fantasy, it's reality. When someone takes away you privlidges for no reason and says you're not special, you know that person is wrong. Everyone is extraordinary in their own way, even if someone else doesn't like it.
Rating:
Summary: Magical Book, Terrible Movie
Review: This was one of my favourite children's books. It is a wonderful story, about a little girl with a kind heart and a big imagination, which, although it is a moral story, doesn't seem to preach. Naturally, Hollywood got hold of this book and made a terrible new movie, which is syruppy and unbelievable. Sara is made an American (for no reason other than that it is a Hollywood film) and her father doesn't really die...The BBC did do a good adaptation of the book, probably in the 1980s, which does capture its themes and spark quite well. But anyone who loved this book, or who thinks they might enjoy it, should avoid the recent movie like the plague.
Rating:
Summary: Excelente!
Review: What I great movie directed by the mexican Antonio Cuarón, the photography is remarcable, this movie is about values, courage and hope, great film that should take out the best of everyone!
Rating:
Summary: A Little Princess Review
Review: This review is from a guy who sees almost every movie
in the theatre and likes very few of them. I saw A Little
Princess at the FineArts theatre in Chicago when it was
in business. A little Princess is one of the few truly
moving films. The story, imagery and music in this film
generate a magic that Disney has rarely if ever matched.
Rating:
Summary: The best movie version of the story from the author of...
Review: "The Secret Garden". I rented both this version and the 1939 Shirley Temple one. I didn't much like the latter, since I can't stand Shirley Temple. However, the 1995 Warner Bros. version is superb. As Sara Crewe, Liesel Matthews is perfect for the role whereas Shirley was NOT. Unlike Temple's overrated and overly cutesy presense, Matthews comes across as a real child in this version, and never resorting to showy, shrill theatrics to get her emotions across. She's very believable, as well as quite attractive-looking. The 1993 "Secret Garden" film is also superior to Margaret O'Brien's campy 1949 version. The 90's versions of "Secret Garden" and "Little Princess" are among only a handful of remakes that improve upon the original films. This is because they have higher production values, beautiful cinematography, and they do NOT use the latest popular child stars to carry the roles of Frances Hodgson Burnett's immortal child characters. How can you say that about other remakes?
Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous - But Is There More then One Version/Ending?
Review: I have watched this film several times on TCM and believe that each time there were differences ... especially in the ending. In one version, the daughter finds her father recuperating from his war wounds next door to the school where she has been forced to work as a scullery maid after notification of her father's death. In the second version, she finds her father in a hospital ward. There are other differences. Both versions are beautifully wrought and well performed ... but it would be interesting to know why two endings were shot and which ending is included in this video.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite childhood book!!
Review: Both the shirley temple movie and the recent one do not do this book credit at ALL! I have read this book over 20 times since the age of seven, and im now 20. I still think of it and smile. Neither actress is Sara, Sara is this solemn, introspective little girl, who creates a world for herself full of goodness and 'the magic' because she is so good herself. Neither actress conveyed that, but on to the book. A Little Princess is one of the greaest chldren's stories ever written, I still feel sad when I remember how she says, "and I was right next door all this time", and excited when I think about the dimaond mines. Its just a book that stays with you like that. I adored it and I reccomend it to any little (or big) girl. If you want to see a movie that actually reflects the TRUE story rent the BBC version, it isnt flashy, or a big budget movie or anything but it is the EXACT story with the perfect actress as Sara.
Rating:
Summary: A Little Princess
Review: Title: A Little Princess
By: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Reviewed By: ...
Period: 4 There is a young girl named Sara. She is a very smart, kind and clever girl. Sara likes to read books and imagine things. Her father had to go off in India for a job so he left Sara at a school. They were a very rich family. Sara always wore the fancy clothes and she got everything she desired. At the school, everyone always looked at her. She made some friends but very few. A few Years later, her father dies. She becomes a poor, dirty maid who cleans at the school. She still has contact with her friends but very few. She met a neighbor that just moved in. It turns out that he is looking for her because he was a close friend of her dad. The neighbor doesn't know that Sara is the girl at the school next door.
Later on they meet, and Sara's life becomes a lot better.
I liked this book because it kept making me want to read on. I didn't want to stop. It was such a interesting book. I've never read a book like this one. It's so fun how she is very happy at first and then sad later on. " Nobody but Sara herself ever knew what had happened in her room after she had ran upstairs and locked the door. In fact, she herself scarcely remembered anything but that she walked up and down, saying over and over again to herself in a voice which did not seem her own: 'My Papa is dead! My papa is dead!'" That was the sad part.
This book always made me think about how nice of a girl Sara was and what a kind heart she had. I was crying when she had become a poor, maid after her father died and left no money. She always cared for others and was an excellent student at school. "'Ah, Madam, ' he said, ' there is not much I can teach her. She has not learned french; she IS french. He accent is exquisite." That is what her french teacher told The head mistress.(She is very smart)
My favorite part of the book is when she meets friends. Although she had kind ways to talk to people, she always met people in a strange way. For instance, when she met one of her friends, Lottie,it was when Lottie was crying. Lottie was screaming out that she had no mother. Sara never really met her mother. Then, Sara offered to be her adopted mother.I thought that was strange but nice of her. It stopped Lottie from crying so hard and she became very close friends with her. That is what I liked about the book.
Rating:
Summary: "GoodFellas" for girls
Review: Or: Griffith goes Girl Power. In the history of film, a handful of pictures stand out for the jaw-dropping, revolutionary power of the vision that their directors brought to the screen. Think of "Napoleon", "The Scarlet Empress", "Citizen Kane", "Breathless", "2001". Alfonso Cuaron brings the same intensity to bear in his production of "A Little Princess", creating a masterpiece whose stampeding procession of set pieces knocks the viewer to the floor . Awash in blazing light, burnished golds, and vernal greens, the film's mystical India and menacingly enchanted New York create an intoxicating atmosphere for the Blakean story of a little girl horribly lost in an unforgiving world once she is bereft of her beloved father. Young Sara's gifts for imagination and compassion war against Miss Minchon's brutish system of materialism and grinding practicality in a story that is accessible to children but offers higher truths for the adult. The screenplay, awash in references to the "Ramayana" and with hints of pantheistic intuition, compliments the Shelleyan Romanticism of the visuals. Cuaron and his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki achieve a kind of pictorial radiance matched only by the Bertolucci of "Little Buddha" and "Beseiged". The incisive editing, the soaring cranes, create an exhilarating sense of wonder: the unbelievable audacity of the scene in which Sara consoles a little girl hurls us over any objection to the sentimentality by sheer creative authority-- the swooning poetry of the images and words forces our belief. Long before the famous Snow Scene, the viewer is wheeling over with intoxication at the beauty of this film. Shot by shot, this is the most perfectly realized example of sheer rapture in the cinematic canon. Simply the greatest film of the '90s.
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