Critic Reviews

Refreshingly anti-princess and sweet without degrading into sugary, Ramona and Beezus animates Ramona's frequent flights of fancy with DIY-like sequences that literalize, quite charmingly, how a kid colors the world.

This is a featherweight G-rated comedy of no consequence, except undoubtedly to kids about Ramona's age.

The overall tone of the film is sunny, with Ramona and Beezus resiliently turning life's lemons into lemonade.

Knits together scenes and themes from all eight of Cleary's Ramona Quimby novels into a sweet and funny, if slightly overlong, portrait of life on a modern-day Klickitat Street.

Newcomer Joey King is funny and adorable as daydreaming 9-year-old Ramona Quimby.

Corbett (of Sex and the City fame) is oddly cast, but still a lovable, if dorky, dad, capable of saving the day.

While it isn't the only adaptation to give flesh (or ink) to Cleary's indomitable misfit, it's the most accessible retelling to date.

Director Elizabeth Allen coaxes fine performances from her cast young and old, stumbling only when relying too heavily on musical cues (Katrina & the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine" needs to be permanently retired) and in the film's awkward CGI flights of imaginative fancy. Other than that, the movie is, to quote its young heroine, "terrifical."

A gentle, charming movie and really a parent's dream: a kid's movie that doesn't involve action sequences or explosions. Yet you wish the filmmakers had adhered to Mr. Quimby's no-nonsense point of view and found a way to make this family slightly less squeaky-clean.

On the other hand, this proud graduate of the School of Cleary Classics wishes that, like the young heroine herself, Ramona and Beezus dared more often to color outside the lines.