Little Women (2019) is a wonderful movie from every aspect. It has a powerful story, superb acting and beautiful costumes and design. Moreover, it seems to me that I am flipping the pages of a painting book. Every scene looks like a beautiful canvas.

I will definitely introduce it to my mom and my girls. I already imagined watching it many years later and still be touched as hell.

OK, so, I am not intimately familiar with the novel(s). I want to read them, but because I struggle with literature above a certain age, I thought maybe this could be a good starting point to help me access the novel later.

I saw this with my mother who has read the book several times and even she had reservations about it.

I don't really have the competence to give an in depth review of this movie even if I just take it on board as a movie and not in terms of how it translates the novel to the screen.

But what we found quite bemusing was how they basically do the exact opposite of what was done for the recent adaptation of IT: they take not only Alcott's more famous book but splice it with the first sequel "Good Wives". Upon research I have discovered these were originally published as one novel in two parts but here is Britain they were two totally different volumes; two different novels so maybe I was a bit hard on the movie just now but it was still bizarre.

One thing I do feel confident in condemning is the movie's commitment to a non-linear narrative that certainly was never used by Alcott. Very early on you see "7 years earlier" which is not ideal film making but whatever. What really gets to me is that that is the last time they do that. I didn't realise they were switching back and forth in time until over half way through because the narrative gave very little indication. The girls do not age physically at all in these 7 year jumps.

I get the strong impression that this movie was tailored for people who had read the book, in fact, those who were intimately familiar to it, leaving people like me who were very willing to hear what this movie had say, high and dry. Its confusing...

The acting is a mixed bag. I think the sisters are applying very naturalistic acting to very stylized period literary dialogue and it makes it very hard to lose yourself in the story. If they'd approached it more like a '40s movie the whole thing would have worked better.

On another note: I can never pick nuances in these movies. I thought Jo was a tomboy because she doesn't seem to be one here. But apparently in the 19th century any female with messy hair was a tomboy. Well I guess that settles it...

So, although I admit that maybe my perspective isn't the most reliable here, this came across to me as muddled, careless and fanfictiony.