Last night we went to someone’s house to watch a film, Little Women, over bowls of khao suey. The film suffered from the environment: the volume was very low, as there were infants somewhat asleep in adjacent rooms; our hosts were the types who talk and bustle about through films so it was distracting, and of the two infants one toddler came out to watch the film with us and loudly preferred to watch lego films on Youtube (a contemporary horror if I ever saw one) while the other was teething and often started to bawl.
In these circumstances the film itself was passable at best and I like it less after thinking it over for a day or so. What I liked: the casting of the female characters (Amy particularly, though she looked rather too old); the decision to make Professor Bhaer a young hottie, the jumping around in time, and the decision that Jo would not end up with Professor Bhaer; I even quite liked the talking about women and marriage, though it was unresolved and somewhat unsatisfying. What I didn’t like: Marmie was a wasted character after I’d read quite recently an article about her rage which I thought interesting; the casting of Laurie was terrible as he never managed to look other than a petulant pubescent; Beth’s illness and death was not particularly affecting, perhaps because of that darting back and forth in time; Bob Odenkirk was cast as Mr March and it was really hard not to see Saul Goodman in him.
At the very climax of the film, where the Gerwig film diverges from the book and Jo’s marriage to Bhaer is presented as fiction to placate the publisher, the teething baby started crying and his mother had fallen asleep on the sofa so we went to sooth him. So we missed that scene but it felt not a great loss.
I might watch it again in better circumstances, but it seemed to be a film for effect of thoughtfulness rather than actually thoughtful. I didn’t care for Gerwig’s Lady Bird either.