I wasn't much older than Harriet M. Welsch when I first watched this movie. I remember enjoying it but feeling funny about the moral aspect of it. I have rewatched it a few times since, and decided to read Louise Fitzhugh's 1964 novel before writing this review. The movie is rather faithful to Fitzhugh's work even if it is set in the 1990's. My feeling hasn't changed much after all these years, and I am still puzzled about the life lessons we find in this unusual story.

I will start by acknowledging the colourful costumes and sets and the stimulating photography. The movie is fun to watch and both child and adult actors are believable in their respective roles. Harriet the Spy follows the adventures of sixth-grader Harriet Welsch, an aspiring writer who believes snooping on her neighbours and taking notes is the best way to learn her trade. Harriet is from a well-off family and has a nanny named Golly. In the novel, most of the school children are rich and have maids and cooks. They attend a private school and wear uniforms. The movie has removed many of these elements to make the children relatable to a wider audience. But Golly is such an essential character, she could not be removed. Golly encourages the girl to write, exposes her to various people and places, but also acts as a moral compass. When under various circumstances Golly decides that her ward is old enough to fend for herself, the woman leaves and Harriet is deeply affected. Soon after, her classmates find one of her notebooks and read the harsh comments she made about them. Harriet is very judgemental in her writing, and her classmates all turn against her, even her two best friends. They begin playing mean tricks on her and Harriet strikes back. Harriet's parents take her to a psychologist because she has become mean and depressive and has been caught by a police officer for trespassing. The way Harriet finds her motivation again is through a visit from Golly and being assigned the role of sixth-grade newspaper editor so she can turn her writing obsession into something useful.

Now, I understand the notion of not talking down to children. Fitzhugh wished to present a realistic portrait of their minds and lives and Harriet is not meant to be a role model at all. Still, I don't find the outcome very believable. I don't understand how all of a sudden, Harriet's classmates vote for her as new editor after all she has done to them. They show a form of grace that is not realistic and is unjustified. Harriet is not exactly repentant, yet she is rewarded for her misdeeds. In the film, Harriet begins to write kinder things from that point on and learns to drop her hasty judgement on people. This adds a redemptive side to the story, but in the novel, she hasn't changed much and is actually allowed to publish her mean comments about people, the kind of elements she jots down in her notebooks. So, you will see why I am uneasy about the conclusion. But go ahead and watch it and you be the judge.

I loved this book when I was growing up in the sixties, and I was thrilled when I found out that they made a movie out of it, but didn't get around to seeing it until last night. At first, I thought it was going to be one of those disappointing, modernized versions, mostly because of the distracting musical score, but despite the truly annoying score, the movie remained true to the book except for a few minor details. Even the toys depicted were from the era that the book was written in. I think that's so important when making a movie out of a children's book. The story is brilliant, about a little girl who wants to be a writer, so she gets her practice by keeping a notebook in which she writes down all her thoughts and observations about the people in her world, and even goes to the extreme of spying on people to get her material. When the notebook falls into the wrong hands, her world is turned upside down. I think the film does a very good job of portraying the children in a realistic light, and I could identify with Harriet's feelings as well as those of her friends and classmates. The adults in the movie, as well as Harriet's nemesis, seemed a bit like caricatures, but Harriet's character and those of her best friends were quite well developed. Definitely worth seeing if you are a fan of this book.

A writer while describing the life and work of John Le Carré said this: "Writer and spy are two lonely professions, carried of emotions and both are developed under a certain load of tension". Nothing is more adequate than such quote when the analyzed person is the great Le Carré, author of treasures like "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "Smiley's People" among many other espionage novels. The same can't be said to the main character of "Harriet the Spy" neither about the story, that almost reached such description (and it could have been way better).

So, little Harriet (Michelle Trachtenberg) wants to be a writer and for such she pretends to be like a spy who sees everything, writing down all the things she sees, from random and somewhat pointless happenings to making truthful remarks about her friends and school mates. But when her diary is stolen by her most ferocious enemy things can turn out to be real bad for her if such descriptions be known to everyone she knows.

A cute movie, nice to watch but that doesn't help us much. Fine, this a movie for kids and for them is prefect, very enjoyable, but those kind of flicks work better if they attract mature audiences as well, even if using two or three jokes for them. The cast assembled here with names like Trachtenberg, Rosie O'Donnell, Robert Joy and Gregory Smith makes of "Harriet the Spy" quite a good film, and we can excuse some of its problems.

The main focus that a good writer is made with observations and notes only isn't much handy (as Harriet discovers). Above all, and I can't believe this was left out of the movie, a good writer must be a great reader of all sources and different types of readings, must have a background of readings. And if I'm making too much fuzz over a kid's movie, too much complications, is because is that I wanted to see an intelligent work, with this kind of plot but in a dramatic way, with lots of suspense, a teenager who wants to be a writer but gets involved with more and more trouble while covering a story. Instead, we have an emo tale filled with corny moments. But that's OK. 6/10