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Commenter: [points to Dusty] That man is magic. He’s a magic man.
Rating: PG
Director: Wayne Wang
Writers: Kate DiCamillo, Joan Singleton
Stars: AnnaSophia Robb, Jeff Daniels, Cicely Tyson, Dave Matthews, Eva Marie Saint
Release Date: February 18, 2005
Run time: 1 hour, 46 minutes
THE PLOT:
via wiki:
Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni has just moved to the fictional small town of Naomi, Florida with her father who is a preacher.
While at Winn-Dixie, Opal encounters a scruffy Berger Picard that is wreaking havoc. She (not wanting the manager to send him to the pound) claims that he is her dog and names him “Winn-Dixie”. He becomes friends with everyone he encounters, and so Opal makes some new friends in the process. She also rekindles her relationship with her father and learns ten things about her mother, Benjean-Megan, who abandoned them when she was three. She describes the preacher as a turtle, always sticking his head into his shell, and never wanting to come out into the real world. This is most likely because of how sad he is about her mother, whom he is still in love with.
One of the people Opal meets is Miss Franny Block, a kind and somewhat eccentric elder librarian, who tells her many great stories, including one involving a bear who invaded the library. She also meets Gloria Dump, a blind African-American recovering alcoholic with a “mistake tree” with beer bottles hanging from it in her backyard. She tells Opal that the bottles, including alcohol bottles, represent the ghosts of all the things she has done wrong.
One day, fed up with Winn-Dixie, the landlord of the Bulonis’ trailer park, Mr. Alfred, demands they get rid of him. The preacher calls the pound, but Opal begs to keep him. Unable to see her upset, he asks the pound to return Winn-Dixie, claiming he is not the same dog he called about. The preacher is able to convince Mr. Alfred to allow them three months’ time to find Winn-Dixie a new home. However, it is later revealed that, like a lot of the characters, Mr. Alfred is dealing with difficult feelings which impact how he interacts with the Bulonis and Winn-Dixie.
Opal gets a job at Gertrude’s Pets and befriends the manager Otis, a shy ex-convict with a passion for music. She also meets a young girl named Sweetie Pie Thomas, who is eager to get a dog like Winn-Dixie. With enough new friends, Opal and Gloria decide to host a party. Opal also takes a risk by inviting Mr. Alfred to the party as well, which he, after hesitating, begrudgingly accepts. Opal also becomes a friend to her former enemies, the brothers Stevie and Dunlap Dewberry, and to her sour-faced neighbor, Amanda Wilkinson, who lost her younger brother Carson when he drowned in the town lake the previous summer, which inspires Opal’s compassion.
During the party, a severe thunderstorm strikes, and Winn-Dixie, being pathologically afraid of them, runs away. While Opal looks for him, her father wants to give up and she blames him for the loss of her mother and Winn-Dixie running away. He explains that he tried very hard to look for her mother. He then admits that it was his fault that she left him, and he believes that she is never coming back. However, he is grateful that she left Opal with him. Later they go back to the party and Otis starts to play a song on his guitar. Winn-Dixie is heard outside howling along to it. Everyone, while singing, lets him in and welcomes him back.
My Review
Because of Winn-Dixie is a film adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s 200 novel of the same title and it tells the story of Opal, the lonely daughter of a single-father itinerant preacher, who has recently been relocated to a new rural town, far from her friends. With the help and intervention of the dog, she makes new friends and helps the people of this small town to find community again – something the place has lacked since the local candy shop closed its doors years before. It’s a cute movie, but probably lacks the character complexity to be enjoyable for most adults. It is aimed squarely at an audience of children, which is something I found to be refreshing. It’s not traumatic. It does not include a scene wherein you will have to pause the film to explain something awful about the adult world. It won’t lead to a therapy bill. This is a movie you can watch with your child.
The language in the movie is very kid-friendly, too, with “hell” only coming up briefly as a talking point (with an adult character explaining that while it is a curse word, it is also an apt description for war.)
Probably the most tense portion of the film involves the search for Winn-Dixie after he runs away during a thunderstorm near the film’s conclusion. I am happy to report that the search and eventual rescue was appropriately tense for a child, and not the sort of thing that will cause mental health damage for the rest of his or her life… unlike some other dog-centric films you may have seen before. *ahem*
That’s not to say that the story does not include many of the problems that people face in the real world. The mother of the main character (Opal) is absent, and we learn that she developed a drinking problem and left her family when Opal was only three years old. This absence creates much of the loneliness for Opal that Winn-Dixie the dog helps with. One of the town’s eccentric side characters also is a recovering alcoholic. The local pet shop owner – played by Dave Matthews – spent time in prison after punching a police officer in the nose, when said officer tried to take his guitar for the crime of disturbing the peace with good music. However, all of these issues are approached with the care and minimization of details that one would take in explaining hard things to a child. The film’s story is not told in such a way that an older audience member would need to explain it to a child, and then comfort him or her over the details.
The film also presents Christianity in a neutral way. Jeff Daniels portrays both Opal’s father and a pastor and he is treated fairly as both a good person, but also a flawed person. None of the local church congregation members are presented negatively. There is no stereotypically awful old church lady character. Christianity isn’t made fun of, nor is the story such that it sounds like a sermon. Again, I found that to be refreshing.
Beneath the surface of the film, you’ll probably notice some social commentary. The small town’s sense of community was nearly destroyed by the closing of the candy plant. The people not only lost their jobs, but their sense of togetherness. Without the candy plant in common, they stopped sharing their sadness and their joy. It is never spelled out in the story, but you leave the film thinking that this form of modernization is bad and that our society needs to address it. The subject of war comes up, briefly, and it is described in the most negative possible terms. That was a notable thing to do in 2005’s America, when the Wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq were still quite hot. The film also subtly pokes fun at the police. The local police officer is a lot of the film’s comedy relief. The way that he achieves that, though, is by being the police stereotype of “dork on a power trip.” This stereotype kind of comes and goes out of fashion, but you notice it when you’re used to the police getting superhero treatment in film and television. There was a time when the more frequent film treatment of the police profession was more along the lines of what we see in The Dukes of Hazzard and Smokey and the Bandit, and this film felt like a call back to that era.
I was surprised and entertained by the presence of Dave Matthews in the film. First, he was great as a mumbling ex-con with a heart of gold. The movie incorporated his musical talents into the plot (but without overdoing it.) This movie was his second major film role, with the first being a remake of “Where the Red Fern Grows.” Apparently Dave Matthews has a thing for dog films.
If you pay close attention, you’ll also spot a very young Elle Fanning in this one, too.
With all of that said, I also thought the movie was a little bit boring. You know what’s coming from the moment you meet the dog until the movie ends. It had some laugh moments when the dog got up to some hijinks (particularly memorable is Winn-Dixie’s boisterous capture of a mouse during a church service) but the movie was not really aimed at me. I’m grateful that it wasn’t, too, as that likely would have meant taking it away from, or making it unsafe for its intended younger audience (a tradeoff the Hollywood is usually all-too-willing to make.)
Overall, I thought this was a good, warm-hearted movie about a girl and her new canine best friend. The film is very kid-friendly and offers a positive message about love and community. If you’re looking for something to watch with your child, I recommend it.