Dad may lose his job – but he finds his vocation.
The overall tone of the film is sunny, with Ramona and Beezus resiliently turning life’s lemons into lemonade. Ramona finds support in her sympathetic aunt (Ginnifer Goodwin), herself a younger sister who has grown up in the shadow of an older sibling. She elicits remarkably honest performances from her younger stars. Will they lose the house? And have to move?ĭirector Allen, whose previous film was the uninspired mermaid saga “Aquamarine,” tells the Quimbys’ story gracefully.
When Dad (John Corbett) gets downsized and Mom (Bridget Moynahan) can get only part-time work, the sisters have to pull together despite the stuff that divides them. Their sibling rivalry takes a back burner to bigger family issues. Ramona (Joey Lewis, refreshingly natural) feels bad because everything Beezus does is right and everything she does is wrong. Ramona is perpetually annoyed that she can’t escape her sister’s long shadow.Īs Beezus, Selena Gomez (the Harriet Potterish teen on Disney’s “The Wizards of Waverly Place”) nicely plays an anxious high-schooler, a straight-A student exasperated by Ramona’s hyperactive imagination. Set in contemporary Portland, but also in the timeless universe of family dynamics, “R and B” is blessed with young actresses who resemble actual kids and not motormouth moppets on TV sitcoms.īeezus Quimby is perpetually irritated that Ramona steals her sunshine.
It boasts a daddy/daughter plotline that is very touching. “Ramona and Beezus” is not for girls only. Like the beloved Beverly Cleary books that inspired it, Elizabeth Allen’s captivating film shows what the world looks like from the perspective of a scrappy 9-year-old who is neither as fearless as she thinks nor as hopeless as others peg her. If Ramona, the spirited third-grader at the center of “Ramona and Beezus,” gave a one-word review of the movie about her love/hate relationship with her big sister, Beatrice, she would say that it was “terrifical.”
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