The movie, for its part, has the opposite problem: there are almost too many characters to sympathize with. Sara, odd in nothing save her attachment to getting her own way and her retelling of the Ramayana, is pretty, kind, and sweet, altogether more magnanimous, and the delight of her dear papa. As for him, he's nothing like the indulgent scatterbrain he is in the book. Example:

"I am not in the least anxious about her education," Captain Crewe said, with his gay laugh, as he held Sara's hand and patted it. "The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books--great, big, fat ones--French and German as well as English--history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. Drag her away from her books when she reads too much. Make her ride her pony in the Row or go out and buy a new doll. She ought to play more with dolls."

Right. He's not the digustingly rich spendthrift who's so amused at having a "little missus" of a daughter who's almost more serious and down-to-earth than he is. No, here he's the valiant soldier who would and does do anything for his little girl. As soon as his amnesia clears up, that is.

And so it goes: Ermengarde isn't the piggish school dunce who tries to convince Sara to help her cheat, she's downtrodden and misunderstood. Becky is intelligent and understanding and winds up as Sara's adopted sister rather than attendant in the end. Amelia, the comic relief, is a hopeless romantic who breaks free from her sister's control by running off with the milkman. Even the bratty Lavinia comes through in the end, and Miss Minchin herself actually blinks back tears in one scene. Ach, who to feel sorry for, who to feel sorry for...

The reversed-Cinderella line has the potential to be terribly sappy. The book might not have chosen to portray it that way, but the movie more than makes up for it. Still, I'm fond of the thing. All right, so the amnesia bit gets on my nerves a little. Amnesia, really... But the idea of having everything take place in New York during World War I is actually pretty fitting, and the styles and mannerisms of the time are portrayed excellently. And, sappiness aside, the movie has some convincing acting, nice costumes, gorgeous chamber music, and some absolutely wonderful child actors. Yes, that does matter. Maybe the brat who played Anakin Skywalker in Episode One threw me off the track, but, with the exception of the two kids from The Others, there seems to be a serious dearth of good child actors now.

Why I just rambled about all this I have no idea...

Adieu.