Sexyloutak
Absolutely the worst movie.
Rio Hayward
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Maleeha Vincent
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
Python Hyena
Harriet the Spy (1996): Dir: Bronwen Hughes / Cast: Michelle Trachtenberg, Rosie O'Donnell, Gregory Smith, Vanessa Lee Chester, Eartha Kitt: Wonderful family film that teaches children the value of trust and friendship. Harriet is an observer who oversees the pain of those around her but is nonchalant to the fact that she can cause pain too. Harriet wishes to become a writer so she prowls the streets in witness. At home she is in the care of her nanny who is fired when she and a date take Harriet to a movie. A game of bumper tag lands her pad in the wrong hands and awful truths surface that cause distance from her friends. Beautiful locations accompany an eye for detail. Stylish directing by Bronwen Hughes who creates a family film that parents can engage in with their children due to the themes it raises. Michelle Trachtenberg delivers a spunky performance as Harriet with conviction and curiosity. Rosie O'Donnell is strong as Harriet's nanny who views things at face value. Gregory Smith and Vanessa Lee Chester play her friends who must decide whether or not to forgive or to reduce themselves to the lows of other classmates. Eartha Kitt also makes an appearance as some mysterious individual observed by Harriet. Here is a family film that raises questions as well as entertain. Themes of friendship and forgiveness result in one of the best family films of the decade. Score: 10 / 10
Saku_Tatsuya
I grew up being forced to watch this film, quite simply because my siblings adored it and I ended up having to watch it with them whether I like it or not.Now the story is simple and straight foreward- a young girl spies on other people and writes about their flaws in a notebook she carries with her everywhere but her fun in spying is soon foiled when the other kids read the notebook and thus begin to lash out onto her. The class gets their revenge on her and she gets revenge back and she ends up apologizing for her actions.Even when I was like eight or nine when I first saw the film, I never felt bad for Harriet. Why? Simply because this definitely was not a victim-less situation where "oh, poor Harriet everyone is picking on her; let's pity her!" comes to mind. Heck no, in fact I ended up feeling more sorry for some of the people she got back at. Sure, the bullies were harsh but what she did was over the line. I didn't even feel sorry for her in the first place because she had it coming the entire time that she was spying, writing notes in her book and writing rather negative conclusions about other people. Had it not been for her "greater than thou" attitude, I would have appreciated the story a lot better.Speaking of her "greater than thou" attitude, am I the only one who was always bothered by her revenge scene? She simply could've been the bigger person to actually realize that her nosey habits and attitude were the problem, not just other people. However, no, we follow a rather immature brat who instead of taking responsibility goes as far as using verbal abuse and cutting off someone's long braid off for her own petty "revenge"; even though she was asking for it the moment she chose to bring the book everywhere.2/10
akalite_libra
I saw this movie with my dad when it came out in the theaters -AHHH! IT CAME OUT IN IN 1996!!! I FEEL SO OLD!!-...ahem-sorry, my age just slapped me in the face. Anywho, we were watching the movie and the movie went out just as Harriett was taking out all her supplies from various places, and I remember telling my dad, "Maybe they don't want us to know where she keeps her things." The reason I bring up that random memory is because I remember it. I was so entranced by it, I remember saying that. I use to love this movie. The movie use to depress me, though, as Harriet loves all her friends thanks to her spying. Anyway, the acting is OK. Granted, it's no "Shakespeare in love", but it's OK. The story is also very out there, however, that's not fair for me to say, as I can't remember the storyline!
tedg
This little film has been roundly criticized for being disjointed and amateurish. Well, it _is_ disjointed: part of it is surreal allegory, part realistic morality play. Part of it moves with a natural rhythm while other parts seem to have been transplanted from afternoon TeeVee. Some is done with a cartoon cosmology, and the rest is straight from Marlo Thomas' heart. Distributed throughout are mottles of bad acting and unconsidered dialog.And I loved it all. Why?Because this is in the tradition of movies and books that generate themselves. Rather, the characters in the stories play double duty as the authors of the story and the creators of the world that surrounds it. So it makes sense as precisely what a preteen would imagine her older self writing about her. Indeed, the whole thing is a meditation on how someone might abstract the world (for writing) without a mature faculty for abstraction — which is to say how a kid would imagine an adult's mind imagining a kid's mind.Its all about the deep problems of writing. I imagine the author of the original book sitting down and having trouble writing, them ruminating about why on the page.Therefore, we have a youthful experimenter, a blocked writer, a "gardener" who makes environments from trash, another maker of environments (cages) who craves companionship, a woman who lives in a cage (Kitt), the Dad who is a movie comedian, together with lesser characters.And the spy who spies so she can write what we see. It is all about sight and callow abstraction, just what movies were made for. Sure, it differs from the book because film can amplify what the book cannot. The adapter (the guy that did the game as life as game "Jumanji" project) understood this.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
