Wonderful acting from the young leading lady! In fact, the entire cast is brilliant and the film wonderfully colorful and entertaining, as a young girl becomes obsessed with a play. The film blends many genres seamlessly without any one of them becoming overbearing. Very good film indeed!

I saw this movie last night, and it was excellent. Young Elle Fanning is gorgeous, and her acting is so good it's unfair. Patricia Clarkson plays the theatre teacher who is seemingly detached from reality, and plays it well. Felicity Huffman and Bill Pullman both did well, but Pullman's role was, I felt, too small. Campbell Scott was both hilariously inept and depressingly realistic as a (presumably) elementary school principal unwilling or unable to see the beauty and talent in each of his charges. However, where this movie falls apart is the ending. Yes, it was cute and sweet, disgustingly so, but I had two problems with it. My first problem is that there's no way in hell that what Phoebe had was a simple case of Tourette's Syndrome. I saw another review saying that she showed symptoms of OCD, depression, and schizophrenia. I agree with this, and I have to ask what the writers were thinking when they decided that TS was an appropriate explanation for what was clearly so much more. My other problem is the way they ended the film. Yes, it's sweet, and cute, and it makes me want to puke, but it's not how a lot of these stories end. Lots of these types of stories end with the child killing or severely injuring themselves. This was also the direction I thought the movie was going to go, what with Mrs. Dodger constantly telling her students to "jump", and then Phoebe's comparison to jumping off a roof. While I don't think suicide or severe injury is a good thing, I feel that a more powerful message may have been conveyed had Phoebe died or been irreparably injured, and had the students, parents, and school faculty been forced to face and deal with the tragedy. I love this movie. Elle Fanning is an amazing actress, and unfairly gorgeous even at a young age, but I hate the ending, and it makes me sad to think that if this movie had been done today, and by a more talented writer, director, etc., it could have been perfect.

a charming puzzle. high performances. and admirable work of Elle Fanning. a film who remands the colors of childhood and, in same measure, the status of contemporary family. a film about refuges and the need of the other. fresh, amusing, melancholic, honest. about a girl and her strange world. about a teacher who gives more than inspiration. about a mother looking her role in her life. profound pledge for old fashion values, it is an open window to a magnificent definition of small things. and that fact does it special. because it is a trip in the heart of things with profound delicacy. a film about the sense of things. as child. as adult. as part of the others existence.

Independent film, they have been most known to be releasing things that are considered to be crap. However I am a huge supporter of indie film because there can be some great gems in the mix. This is one of them.The plot of this movie is that a 9 year old girl named Phoebe is something of a child prodigy. However lately she has been acting strangely and has behavioral issues at school of which she seems to have little restraint (despite her wanting to). She signs up for a school play adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. The rather odd drama teacher casts her for the leading role. She befriends a boy named Jamie who plays The Queen Of Hearts. As time goes on she becomes more attached to Wonderland, blurs the lines of fantasy and reality as well as dealing with a mental illness.The acting is phenomenal from everybody. I never knew Elle Fanning could act let alone act this well. She acted and felt like an outcast child with mental problems. Everybody else does a good job as well but at the end of the day it is Fanning's show and she carries the movie well.So to keep this review short, if you like the sort of drama film that involves anything about what I said above, then I think you should go see it. Previous reviews have said that the mental illness explanation wasn't very well done and reading about Tourette syndrome right now, it is. However if you can look past that for the final 5 minutes of the film (when they gave the mental illness a name) then this is definitely worth a look.