Because of Winn-Dixie (film)
From AwardAnnals
| Film: | Because of Winn-Dixie |
|---|---|
| Director: | Wayne Wang |
| Genres: | |
| Distributor: | 20th Century Fox |
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Some people think “family entertainment” is an oxymoron, but even they might enjoy Because of Winn-Dixie. This straightforward story of a girl and her dog is simple without being simplistic, heartfelt without being sappy, and thoughtful without being ponderous. Opal (Annasophia Robb, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, who manages the near-impossible feat of being cute without being cutesy) can’t make any friends in the small town of Naomi until she hooks up with a dog that’s running loose in a supermarket. She spontaneously names him after the store and soon the dog is leading her into unexpected places—a pet store, where she meets an awkward musician (Dave Matthews); a library, where she meets a librarian with as many stories as books (Eva Marie Saint); and into a house shrouded with underbrush, where she meets a blind old woman who sees with her heart (Cicely Tyson). This could have been sentimental glop, but director Wayne Wang (Smoke, The Joy Luck Club) and a restrained script draw honest emotions from the actors and an eerie beauty from the Florida landscape; this one of the few family movies that captures the childhood sense that everyday life can be mystical. Also starring Jeff Daniels (The Purple Rose of Cairo, Something Wild) as Opal’s minister father. —Bret Fetzer
Barnes and Noble
There’s a ready audience for Because of Winn-Dixie, specifically because of Kate DiCamillo’s Newberry Award-winning coming-of-age novel, on which it’s based. And director Wayne Wang, whose resume includes the adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, mostly succeeds in mining the books humane and quirky charms, aside from a few heavy-handed departures into slapstick. Ten year-old Opal (the adorable AnnaSophia Robb) is struggling to adjust to her new home in a small Florida town. Her distant father (Jeff Daniels), a preacher, conducts his services in a convenience store. Opal hasn’t made any friends. And she still laments her absent mother, who abandoned the family when she was a baby and about whom her father refuses to talk. Her luck changes when she encounters a scruffy mutt at the local Winn-Dixie grocery and adopts him, naming him for the store. And so, as Opal narrates, she meets and befriends a gallery of colorful local characters, all because of Winn-Dixie. These include: Miss Franny (Eva Marie Saint), a librarian who tells fanciful stories about a bear she fought off with a copy of War and Peace; Gloria (Cicely Tyson), a blind woman thought by the town’s kids to be a witch; and the guitar-strumming pet-store caretaker Otis (Dave Matthews), who shares a dark secret from his past through song. As in the book, Because of Winn-Dixie makes references to the town’s defunct Litmus Lozenge Co., where each sweet drop contained a measure of “sorrow.” This metaphoric conceit worked better on the page, yet this Winn-Dixie still has complex charms all its own. Donald Liebenson
Related works
Because of Winn-Dixie: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Winn-Dixie is a dog, the shaggy, adopted best friend of 10-year-old Opal (AnnaSophia Robb), a lonely little girl abandoned by her mother and largely neglected by her preacher father. Though director Wayne Wang’s film also features a promising character turn by pop star Dave Matthews, its soundtrack revolves around a core of bright, Southern-inflected performances by female singer-songwriters. The folksy “Opal’s Blues” by Vancouver’s Be Good Tanyas, sprightly “I’ve Gotta See You Smile” by Sixpence None the Richer founder Leigh Nash and an inviting contribution…
The summer Opal and her father, the preacher, move to Naomi, Florida, Opal goes into the Winn-Dixie supermarket-and comes out with a dog. A big, ugly, suffering dog with a sterling sense of humor. A dog she dubs Winn-Dixie. Because of Winn-Dixie, the preacher tells Opal ten things about her absent mother, one for each year Opal has been alive. Winn-Dixie is better at making friends than anyone Opal has ever known, and together they meet the local librarian, Miss Franny Block, who once fought off a bear with a copy of War and Peace. They meet Gloria Dump, who is nearly blind but sees with her heart, and Otis, an ex-con who sets the animals in his pet shop loose after hours, then lulls them with his guitar.
Opal spends all that sweet summer collecting stories about her new friends, and thinking about her mother. But because of Winn-Dixie or perhaps because she has grown, Opal learns to let go, just a little, and that friendship-and forgiveness-can sneak up on you like a sudden summer storm.
Recalling the fiction of Harper Lee and Carson McCullers, here is a funny, poignant, and utterly genuine first novel from a major new talent.
