Thanksgiving is upon us. I always enjoy this holiday because, more than any other, it seems to provide our family an extended opportunity to relax together. The commercial aspects of Thanksgiving are negligible, for which I give thanks, and I never met a four-day weekend I didn't appreciate. Also, after a one to two day cook-fest, we generally have enough left-overs to not need to bother with any real cooking for a couple of days after. Ahhh, the perfect environment for board games, long walks, extended reading and movie watching.

This Thanksgiving the film queued up in our DVD player for family movie time is New Line Cinema's just-released Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. (Official site.)

If any of your family members are devoted American Girl fans, you may have already seen Kit Kittredge and might agree with my assessment that Kit holds up to repeated viewings. If the American Girl phenomenon has not hit your home (my children do not own a single American Girl doll among them), or if your family is heavy on boys, don't allow the American Girl association to scare you off. Even discriminating Film.com staff writer Cole Hadden, a childless single male, found Kit Kittredge An American Girl to be "sweet…intelligent and sincere."

The only special features on this DVD are three very short commercials for other, lower-budget, American Girl DVDs. Aside from that, to access additional special features you have to put the DVD into a computer with internet access, then upload (or download, or whateverload!) updates. That's a lot of effort for questionable return.

Kit seems an appropriate Thanksgiving pick because not only is it fun to watch, it also (corny as it may sound) does a good job reminding us of our own reasons to feel thankful, even during economically trying times. Especially timely because of its Great Depression setting, Kit, her family and friends struggle to make ends meet and to find things to be thankful for. And they succeed at both, all while managing to entertain us at the same time.

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us