How god awful is Little Women (2019)?

[MaryAndGerryLivingInDerry]

I’m watching it today for the first time having loved little women growing up and seen the 90’s version. It’s just so bad!! and the casting of Laurie! He’s terrible.

I’m not a Winona Ryder fan and wasn’t very fond of her Jo March (I did like her in stranger things though) also very much not a Christian Bale fan but I think he was perfect as Laurie.

I loved it , agree Emma Watson truly awful but strangely doesn't bother me in this.

I love little woman, it’s one of my favourite books and I was actually named after one of the sisters.

I’ve love the 1994 version - Christian Bale as Teddy is just perfect

I also liked the 2019 version- like Saoirse Ronan as Jo and I think I’d love Florence Pugh in anything. Timothee Chalamet was pleasant enough to watch but he’s not a scratch on Christian Bale.

Agree with the bad casting for Meg and Beth
Also didn’t feel the chemistry between Jo and Fredrick either

I loved the ending with them all having fun in the garden.

Oh I quite like this version. Agree that Emma W and particularly Timothy C (who is just NOT Laurie) are woefully miscast but I really liked Saoirse Roman and Florence Pugh as Jo and Amy.

This was the first version that actually made me like Amy - have always hated her previously.

I also love the June Allyson version very much.

I loved it. I liked Florence Pugh as Amy and wasn’t bothered about the age.

Amy is difficult to cast. She has to start off as a 12-year-old but end up as a, what, 18-year-old?

I can’t watch Emma Watson in anything I’m afraid. I’m still scarred by watching her try to act in ‘Noah’ — she was more wooden than the entire bloody Ark.

I love Florence Pugh in anything.

It's terrible. We watched it when it first came out and I was so disappointed. When I read the book as a child, Jo made me want to be a writer. I can't imagine anyone watching this film version and wanting to be Jo. She was all wrong. The film succeeded in making Amy seem the best character - which shows how much it missed the mark.

It's really disappointing. I thought Florence Pugh was good and Saoirse Ronan too, but other than that the performances were poor, I really didn't enjoy Emma Watson in it, I'm not sure she's a very good actor. I did like Laura Dern too. I hated what they did with the end, and the actor playing Laurie looked all wrong.

@SundayTeatime

Amy is difficult to cast. She has to start off as a 12-year-old but end up as a, what, 18-year-old?

She is. I think they managed it well with Kirsten dunst.

Florence Pughs voice is far too deep and husky to play Amy.

I don't know how awful it is as I gave up after 20 minutes. Saorse Ronan is hit and miss and this time it was a miss. Emma Watson is awful. Laurie was crap.
The Winona Ryder Kirsten dunst version is great.

Oh I’ve just realised they didn’t have Kirsten dunst as 18 year old Amy!

I quite liked it. I take the point about Professor Bhaer but since the French bloke they cast was 🚬 🔥, I went with it. ¯\(ツ)/¯

i found it so boring which was a shame as its something i would love.

One of the biggest disappointments ever. I like Florence Pugh but Amy is meant to be a light character and she’s just not that. 90s version for me all the way. Loved Claire Danes in it.

I saw it at the cinema and was very unsure for the first half an hour, but I left loving it. I think if you're making yet another version of a classic there's little point in just repeating what has been done before but with different actors.

I thought mixing up the timelines worked really well and I liked that there wasn't the jolt of changes in actors as the characters got older. I loved that the screen writer blurred the boundaries between Jo's experiences as an author and Louisa May Alcott's. To me it felt fresh and the changes/additions were in the spirit of the book and added to the story. Like a previous poster said, Amy knowing that she has to 'step up' and marry well for the sake of her family, for example, isn't explicitly said in the novel, but would have been true of the time.

I thought Florence Pugh, in particular, was excellent and it was great to see Amy interpreted as more complex character. A really weak point of the 1995 movie for me was Kirsten Dunst was brilliant as young Amy and then suddenly there's a change of actor and this very proper, bloodless Amy appears. In this film the character's development felt much more natural.

Agree that Emma Watson is a terrible actress, but Meg isn't a make or break character for me!

Oh, I had this in mind as my treat to myself this evening.

I like Florence Pugh but why did they just plait her hair and stick her in a class full of little girls? Obviously I know the tricky bit is that Amy has to go from 11 to late teens/twenties but surely it would have made more sense to cast two actresses rather than try and pass Florence Pugh off as an 11 year old child?

I thought it was quite good though. Overly sentimental but then Little Women is overly sentimental, so not surprising really.

Little Women and Good Wives are always combined in the films, and the timelines can be hard to follow. But this one took the biscuit, it was all over the place, with Amy and Laurie's time in Europe and Beth's illnesses particularly confusing. I am a lifelong fan, but didn't enjoy it.

I really enjoyed it!

And although I have criticised the casting of Florence Pugh as child Amy because it’s ridiculous I think she really did well as adult Amy, and gave her a bit of a personality.

Didn’t realise till rereading the book with dd how drippy all the little women are (except Jo of course) and how much they’re always ‘submissively murmuring.’ That phrase was used more than once and it’s such a random phrase. Also how much of it is so preachy and all about learning to smile while serving others and never complaining even when things are shit.

Jo's Boys (more so than Little Men) would make an excellent subject for a film. Totally agree with pp that this would be better than endless remakes of LW.

I prefer the version with Winona Ryder

I just loved the book. Read it a good few times in childhood and was looking forward to the film in the cinema. But all l could say to myself right through it was..No! NO! That's not the way l imagined it. I hated it and came out extremely disappointed. Doesn't reflect the book and l couldn't care about the characters while reading the book l loved each one.

Is Amy meant to be a light character? I rather liked the emphasis on Amy in this version. I like Florence Pugh as grown-up Amy but I can’t believe her as 12-year-old Amy. It’s just a looks thing. She doesn’t look like a pre-teen at all.