I spent so long trying to read the book and I just could not get into it, so I hoped that watching the film I would enjoy it more, spoilers: I didn’t.

Little Women looks at the lives of four women who are from a somewhat privileged background, however their dad is off fighting in the Civil War and they are starting to become poorer. Each of the women has a different thing happening within their lives and it’s interesting to see how they grow and change throughout the story.

However my first criticism with this film was how it chopped and changed between times. So one minute you would be back to when the women were still young teenagers and then next minute they’re adults with children but look exactly the same. It was very hard to decipher between what time period we were in, what was actually happening, and because a lot of the characters called other characters by nicknames you often wondered did they just forget this character’s name or are they actually going to explain that to me? Because at points they did not.

I find period dramas like this a bit weird because nothing really happens. I feel the whole point and purpose and excitement of a period drama piece is that we get to see into this world of yesteryear that we have not experienced ourselves, we care about these characters and we want to see what their lives are doing, but at the same time we never really get anywhere because reality is quite boring. There is no big overarching storyline, there’s no shock or change, your excitement there is just watching these women grow and learn to live in a changing world and that’s that.

Personally for me this is not a film that I would revisit. It was incredibly long, I found the time jumps very jarring, and the storyline just did not intrigue me too much. It seemed to stay very close to the novel, the parts I read anyway, and maybe that’s part of my issue: I couldn’t get into the novel so I could not connect to the characters and that’s the same issue that happened again with this film, except this time I got to the end of it.

What do you think of Little Women?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding