A Little Princess

Leave aside the real-world princessosity of the principal actress and concentrate on a well-behaved movie with an engaging cast. The evil headmistress is nicely underplayed, but could have been played a little less brittle and with more steel. The scenes where the girls tell the stories they want to hear are very sweet. The magic realism sequences (the somewhat under-imagined animation notwithstanding) don't impede the illusion of meaningfulness. It is too bad that the evil headmistress did not escape in her stainlesss steel zeppelin, but it can't be all in one movie. Varied score by Patrick Doyle.