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.

Always been an Amy fan and loved Florence in it! I’d be absolutely ashamed to be Emma Watson at the premiere, her accent was hilarious.

@GlitchStitch

I thought the BBC version from 2017 was much better. I also loved the Elizabeth Taylor one.

I was going to say this. I remember quite enjoying that one. I must try and hunt it out again

@littleburn

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!

Agree with all this.

It’s not the best version for sure but I thought the reframing of Amy as practical and clear sighted about her prospects rather than the spoiled brat she’s usually portrayed as was clever.
And I loved the Professor Bhaer casting - I’ve never understood why a wild, independent woman like Jo would settle for such a boring old fart like Friedrich but if he looks like Louis Garrell, I am finally on board!

The BBC 2017 version is one of the only ones with sufficient emphasis on the war. I like this version a lot, though it does suffer, as do other versions, with undue prettiness. I like the song sung round the piano: m.youtube.com/watch?v=EosnXGSiDck

Oh I thought it was lovely. And I liked the portrayal of Amy a lot.

I absolutely hated this version. It was one of the last films I saw at the cinema before lockdown began in 2020. I’m sure I started a thread at the time about how much I detested it.

It was my last ever cinema visit.😣

I had a hilarious time watching it last week with 12 year old DD. She knows all the books from cover to cover, so picked apart every line, every hairstyle, every facial expression. It was very funny but would have been awful if I’d actually been trying to watch.
Then we both said we’d enjoyed it! We had had a good time, certainly.
You can imagine how she then dissected BBC’s Malory Towers! (We’ve been cooped up a while here).

Here is my thread in it from back in January 2020.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/films/3805696-Support-group-for-those-who-didn-t-enjoy-the-new-Little-Women-movie

I've read all the books countless times. My favourite screen adaptation is the Winona Ryder one, it looks so painterly. I saw the Florence Pugh version in the cinema, alone, and sitting next to an older lady who was also alone. As the credits rolled we were both sniffling and wiping our eyes. Beth's illness was the best cinematic version in this. But that's all I can say of it.
Interestingly enough, in the USA, what we know as books one and two (Little Women and Good Wives) are in one volume, but they were split out for the UK market.
AND - everyone may have forgiven Amy for burning Jo's manuscript, but I haven't. Then she gets to go swanning around Europe! Grrrrr.

@FudgeSundae

YES! No one in my family agrees but no one loves the books like I do. Particularly upset that they ruined professor Bhaer who is supposed to be middle aged and kind and poor, not some handsome floppy haired socialite?! And AS IF Jo would ever change her mind about turning Laurie down. Absolutely not.

But there’s never been a faithful-to-the novel Bhaer that I’m aware of — Book Bhaer was a stout, middle-aged, bushy-bearded bore, who ticked Jo off for writing frivolous stuff for the papers, and behaved more like her dad than a lover. Casting directors tend to sex him up, as they do Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sense and Sensibility, because otherwise viewers would just think Marianne and Jo are being shortchanged and tune out.

And Jo in the novel does say that she might have accepted Laurie if he’d asked her again after Beth’s death, and that it would have been a mistake.

I liked lots of things about this version — I agree Emma Watson was miscast and that Florence Pugh (whom I really like in general) looked like Laurie’s mum when she was supposedly about 12, and Timothée Chalomet is annoying, but I liked Saoirse Ronan as Jo, I liked what It looked like, and I liked the acknowledgement the marriage plot tended to be forced onto women’s stories.

@BingoLingFucker

You can’t beat the 1949 version.

I can’t bring myself to watch the new version, Emma Watson is such a dreadful actress it puts me off.

This as well, although she does take her smuggery to every role she's in, at least she's consistent in that!

I’ve never forgiven Amy either. It taught me a lot about who I wasn’t when I read the book.

We liked it. I don't remember the details but I know we enjoyed it and we were planning on watching it again over Christmas/New Year.

I didn’t like the time jumping backwards and forwards. They didn’t really ‘age’ so it took me a while to work out what was going on. Amy was obviously way too old.
I’ve always been a firm Jo and Laurie fan, but Professor Baer was uncharacteristically smoking hot, so I could see why she wouldn’t want Timothee Chalamet.

Ok so I’ve finished the whole thing- I didn’t experience a “getting it” moment when all the awfulness made sense?

What a pity! You'll never get that time back!

It has redeeming features. Sorry you didn't enjoy.

What did you think I happened at the end to make it all make sense @Pollingbadly?

Liked some things about it, for menit pulled the emotional strings. agree with lots of posters’ criticisms, especially about the casting.

Preferred the Winona Ryder version, although she didn’t look right for Jo: too conventionally beautiful. Liked Maya Hawke in the role in the relatively recent BBC series.

Liked Laura Derne, Siorse Ronan and Florence Pugh as adult Amy.

I don’t think Laura Derne was right at all. She was more like one of the sisters than their mother.

I watched this a few week ago, totally agree the 90s version I love and I had such hopes for this but sadly not. I'm glad it wasn't just me

I can agree with most of the points made by posters who didn't like it. And I was a huge fan of the books. But still, I loved it. J thought it was beautifully shot, I loved Ronan's Jo, ditto Laurie, and Amy (she was much more believable than in the book), and also Marmee. Much less Meg, but as a PP said, she doesn't matter as much.

I felt as an overall enterprise it was beautiful & had a pleasing arc, I watched it again recently & enjoyed it all over again. The part where Jo cries about being so lonely, is so good, I really empathised.

I don't hate it. And I actually think it's very clever. But I do prefer the Winona Ryder version. I don't mind the skipping backwards and forwards in time but agree you do need to know the book well to work out what's going on.
I agree that Laurie was miscast - he looks much too young to be the adult husband-and-father Laurie at the end. Christian Bale was a fantastic Laurie.

@Littleducks

Yes, the timeline constantly shifting mate me feel dizzy. You have to know the story really well to understand what's going on at all

I completely agree with this. It's only because I know the story well that I was able to follow and enjoy it.