ON THE SILVER SCREEN: "RAMONA AND BEEZUS" SWEETENED BY SUNNY DISPOSITION, HONEST CHARACTERS

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By Brian Lafferty

 

I will admit going into Ramona and Beezus fearing the filmmakers would somehow screw it up. I remember reading all the Beverly Cleary books in third grade and loving every one of them. Fortunately, the director and screenwriters not only have crafted a good, sweet and entertaining movie but as an added bonus they have captured the spirit of the books.

 

One way it does that is through the slice of life structure of the script which, like the books, consists of episodic vignettes mostly revolving around Ramona (Joey King). She is nine years old and, contrary to what her older sister Beezus (Selena Gomez) says, is not a pest. “My dad says I have an overactive imagination,” she sassily explains in the first lines of the movie. She is the female equivalent of Dennis the Menace; she means well and only wants to help but somehow flubs everything miserably. “Everything you touch, you mess up,” Beezus tells her in a fit of frustration.

 

The picaresque script has a knack for illustrating what it feels like to be nine years old and putting us in that mindset. As adults, tearing up the backyard and the back of the house may be ordinary work but to nine year-old Ramona it’s one of the most exciting things that she’s ever seen. She enthusiastically tells the whole class about the “hole in the house” as part of a school report but nobody believes her, especially the teacher, who tells her that her presentation was not what she was looking for.

 

In another memorable scene, she gets so mad with everyone that she announces she will say a bad word. As kids we tended to think words like “butt” as it pertains to the posterior were akin to using profanity. The movie understands this and the result is a funny scene where Ramona bellows “Guts!” which makes everyone in the room laugh and leaves her even more frustrated.

 

Surrounding these vignettes are two main plots. The first is the soft-hearted, believable, if cliché, romance, in which Ramona’s Aunt Beatrice (Ginnifer Goodwin) reluctantly rekindles a flame between her former lover (Josh Duhamel). The second plot may raise a lot of eyebrows. Ramona’s father loses his job and if he doesn’t find a new one, they will lose the house to the bank. When Ramona hears the possibility of the bank taking the house, she thinks the bank really will take it…with a crane and tow truck. I would be lying if I didn't say I felt intermittently distracted, given this subject has been a familiar topic in the news the last few years. But you know what? I forgive it because it was a part of the books and because it was written decades before the current financial crisis.

 

I saw Ramona and Beezus with an audience of both kids and parents. While watching the movie I looked around to see how the kids were reacting. The movie certainly had their interest. The kids sitting in the same row as me didn’t look bored. Aside from the crying baby at the bottom row of the theater (which I had no problem with, by the way), the kids were quiet and watching intently. That’s a good sign because it works on two levels. For kids they will relate to the trials and tribulations Ramona faces through humor. For adults it reminds us, also with humor, of the way we thought and the way we acted, while making us realize how far we’ve come since the age of nine.

 


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