There aren’t words to describe how I feel about this movie. All I can think to say is that it’s so horrific, that it’s absolutely brilliant.

I don’t know who cast this film, but all I can say is: good job. Elizabeth Taylor looks at least five years older than the girl who plays Beth. Beth, who ought to be thirteen, looks around the age of an eleven year old. And Amy, who ought to be twelve, well… just isn’t twelve. Not to mention that “Amy” was taller than all of her classmates, and looked a great deal older than all of them. Oh, just thinking about Amy at the school house makes me want to watch it all over again.

Now, I’m really hoping that this movie has some redeeming qualities, but I’m not holding my breath. So far, this film has to be the worst adaptation of Little Women in the history of forever. It appears as if the good, Christian morals of the Marches have flown out the window. The girls ran out to buy things and forgot about the letter from their father. Okay, wait, let me just say that again, so that it really sinks in: They ran out to buy themselves things, and forgot about the letter from their father who is off fighting a WAR. And the Christmas breakfast? A VOTE? A VOTE about whether or not to do the good thing, or let the Hummels starve to death? Wow. I have a feeling that Mervyn LeRoy’s only knowledge of Little Women was what he saw in Cukor’s version, and what might have been described to him, in rough detail, about the novel itself. Although, I have to admit, watching Amy feed the Hummel children was probably one of the greatest things I’ve seen in a good long while.  I will say this, in defense of the movie: the setting (although at times looking exactly like the Cukor version – i.e. the Laurence’s house) is fantastic. Everything looks like it came directly out of a picture book. Very calculated, almost theatrical. I loved it. So it didn’t have that authentic 1860s vibe, but it sure did look pretty. I just want to spend the rest of my life watching this horrific version of my favorite book. It’s like a train wreck. I just can’t look away or I’m sure I’ll miss a severed limb.