Movie Review: Ramona and Beezus

by KYW's Bill Wine

Don't let that G rating scare you away.

Or, come to think of it, perhaps that rating, connoting something squeaky-clean, beckons parents looking for something to take the youngsters to without worrying.

Either way, Ramona and Beezus is a sweetly likable kid flick, one that focuses thoughtfully on a child's-eye view of grown-up concerns: money, work, romance, education.

Ramona Quimby is the nine-year-old little sister of one Beatrice Quimby, whose name she used to mangle into Beezus.

Ramona is imaginative (which is good) and accident-prone (which is not).

As the middle child, spunky Ramona, played by newcomer Joey King, is stuck between her accomplished, overachieving older sister, played by teen star Selena Gomez, and her adorable, defenseless baby sister Roberta.

When their dad loses his job as the result of a process unfamiliar to them called downsizing, the family is faced with the sad prospect of leaving their comfortable home on Klickitat Street in their cherished neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.

So, in a nod to topicality that has its own dash of poignancy, Ramona cooks up a well-intentioned, headed-for-nowhere scheme or two in an attempt to bring in enough money for the family to escape financial ruin.

Ramona and Beezus is a lighthearted family comedy based on a series of novels by Beverly Cleary that have been around for half a century.  The first, Beezus and Ramona, served as the basis for a 1988 Canadian TV series with Sarah Polley as Ramona.

But in the translation from page to screen, the focus has switched -- and thus so has the title -- from Beezus to Ramona.

Director Elizabeth Allen (Aquamarine) has lent her second feature a nice sense of play and fantasy.  Her film is wholesome without being cloying, affecting without being mawkish, lived-in without seeming oppressively mundane.

Best of all, it has a natural flow: the sisters look like sisters, the family acts like a family, the conflicts seem remembered, not manufactured.

Here is a case of a movie benefiting enormously from rock-solid source material.  Cleary's capturing of the sister dynamic tucked into the overall family dynamic is unerring, and her ear for dialogue is strong -- and both translate smoothly to the screen.

The episodic adapted screenplay by Laurie Craig and Nick Pustay has a smidgen of real-world zaniness and also includes several flights of Ramona's fancy, daydreams rendered in modest bursts of CGI special effects.  But the makers resist the temptation to try to render the comedic material hysterical, which it is not.

Instead, they are wisely satisfied for their film to be consistently and satisfyingly amusing, which it is.

That the narrative continuity isn't exactly airtight and the narrative momentum is modest at best will not bother the core audience in the least.

That's because the ensemble cast is strong, starting with King and Gomez, and proceeding right through their appealingly relaxed elders: John Corbett and Bridget Moynahan as their parents, Ginnifer Goodwin as their aunt Bea, Josh Duhamel as Bea's beau, and Sandra Oh as Ramona's third-grade teacher.

So we'll raise 3 stars out of 4 for the cheery childhood charmer about sisterhood, Ramona and Beezus.  You'll enjoy sneaking peeks at your kids' faces during this one, and don't be surprised if their expressions mirror yours.