Felicity: An American Girl Adventure

FELICITY:

AN AMERICAN GIRL ADVENTURE

REVIEWED BY RISSI C.

Our rating: 5 out of 5

Rated:

My tradition for the last three years has been to watch the American Girl movies on Christmas Eve, since they all end on Christmas Eve. Out of the three that have been made, Felicity is my favorite.

Headstrong Felicity Merriman (Shailene Woodley) is a ten-year-old girl living in the Revolutionary War days in Virginia. Her father (John Schneider) owns a shop in Williamsburg and is a patriot, which has caused a rift between her father and grandfather (David Gardner), who is loyal to the king. During a visit to her father’s shop, Felicity meets Elizabeth Cole (Katie Henney) a young English girl who has just moved to Virginia. The Cole family are loyalists, but the two girls quickly become friends. During her meeting with Elizabeth, Felicity overhears talk of a horse and that her father’s apprentice Ben (Kevin Zegers) is going to make a delivery to the horse's cold-hearted and bitter owner Jiggy Nye (Geza Kovacs). Deciding she wants to go with Ben, Felicity is outraged to find Mr. Nye whipping his horse. Upset that anyone would hurt an animal, Felicity begins to visit the horse, who she names Penny. Slowly, Felicity starts to earn Penny’s trust.

With her tenth birthday, Felicity’s mother (Marcia Gay Harden) decides it’s time for Felicity to begin taking lessons on how to become a proper young lady, so she arranges for Miss Manderly (Janine Theriault) to begin teaching her. Felicity is much to impatient for such things; she would much rather be spending time with Penny or helping her father at the shop, her only consolation is that her new friend Elizabeth is also taking the lessons along with her older, sophisticated, snobby sister Annabelle (Juliet Holland-Rose). Annabelle is constantly making fun of Felicity and her family.

During Felicity’s lessons, she receives an invitation to Lady Templton’s (Lynne Griffin) Christmas Eve ball. Excited to be invited, the three girls begin to learn how to dance properly. When Felicity’s mother becomes deathly ill, Felicity must put aside her dreams of dancing and having a splendid new gown in order to care for her mother and siblings. As far as content goes, there are just a few times when Felicity is disobedient to her parents. She sneaks out several times to see Penny, Ben finds out and helps her. There are a couple of scenes where Jiggy Nye is cruel to Penny, but the horse in never shown with blood on it or injured.

Shailene Woodley was exactly how I have always imagined Felicity. I absolutely loved her. I felt that the whole movie was well cast; sometimes when you read a book you have a picture in your mind of what the characters look like and everyone was just as I had them imagined. The little girl who played Felicity’s sister Nan (Eulala Scheel) was adorable and she was also Marcia Gay Harden’s real life daughter. Felicity, Annabelle and Elizabeth’s gowns were gorgeous. I am not an expert on costumes, I just love to watch costumes dramas, and these gowns were beautiful. I would say that out of the three American Girl films, the screenplay writer Anna Sandor did the best at incorporating all six of the books into the movie. This is a wonderful movie to watch with your young daughters. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and want to see more films like this made.