Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Lets go back to 1999. I was 5 years old, and even though I was a boy into "boy things" that didn't like "girl things," I enjoyed Madeline a lot even though it was "girly." There was a lot of fun adventure, great characters, and stories that were simple enough for me to follow. I absolutely loved the cartoon that aired on Toon Disney. That year in Kindergarten we watched this movie, and it was great because it was just like the cartoons I watched on Toon Disney. It captured the imagination very well, even if it was a little scary.And that's it's single flaw, the "PG edge." I watched it recently, and this movie doesn't really do anything for me outside of nostalgia. I can see how it's great for young children, but not really beyond that. I'm kind of board as a young adult, would have been board as a teen, and would have been board as an 8 year old. The 2 swear words, Pepeto's animal room, and the kidnapping plot (main contributors to the PG I suspect), don't really do anything to make the movie "more appealing for older audiences." All I can see these doing is make it less appealing for parents and guardians to put this on for their young children. While all the plots are handled realistically, they laid them on a tad thick, considering that the TV-Y cartoon could pull them off without being too scary.I recommend this for the target audience of young children, and don't be too turned off by the PG rating. This isn't Goonies PG, this isn't Star Wars PG, this is Frozen and Moana level PG.

This is an interesting take on a classic TV series of a young girl in a French school. It's interesting to take this as they expanded all the characters, like the the girls at the school having all different personalities. I do like Hatty Jones' take on Madaline (she does have a cute voice) as well as Nigel Hawthorne as Lord Covington, especially since he's played parts ranging from King George (in the Madness of King George) to Professor Porter (in Tarzan).I'm not going to give anything away (if you're looking at these reviews, wondering if you should watch this, I would recommend it for girls 10 upwards) but it is lovely. Good actors, good script, combining some of the elements of the original series with the new parts that they put in.Serioulsy, I would recommend it. It's sweet, but also gripping at times (not telling you when! That's cheating). However bad and girly you think it is, watch it. Then, if you still think the same... well, you can think what you think, I still like it!

What a waste. A charming book for little girls is turned into the "adventures" of a group of representative, largely disagreeable little girls. Some makes no sense: why is the owner of a house in Paris "Lord Covington"? Why do some of the girls speak with English accents? But that's almost beside the point. Suddenly there are kidnappers, and the aggravating boy next door becomes all warm and fuzzy. Then Madeline suddenly understands Lord Covington and he becomes all warm and fuzzy too. Like a very bad Halmark Hall of Fame special.Frances MacDermond is good here. Some of the photography of Paris is good - though the Eiffel Tower appears everywhere, as if to keep reminding us that we are in Paris even though it seems to be populated with English.If you liked the children's books, stick with them. This movie isn't at all done in the same spirit. And the "spirit" of this movie is just to provoke a few very manipulated tears.

Madeline is a typically troublesome young red-headed girl who is a ward of the church under the care of Miss Clavel. However just as good as she is at getting into trouble she is equally as good at working out a way out of it. When the kindly Lady Covington dies, Madeline's school loses its most ardent sponsor and faces closure when Lord Covington decides that he no longer has to humour his wife by keeping it open. Obviously none of the girls want this to happen, but Madeline must also deal with other problems as well – not least of which is some sort of plot surrounding Pepito, the son of the Spanish Ambassador.I had not heard of this film or the famous stories from which it had come but I watched it hoping for a strong child character in a strong family comedy drama. Sadly what I got was a very muddled film that has a couple of plots and forgets to do a great deal with any of them. I appreciate that the character is the heart of the film but that doesn't excuse how messy and poorly focused this is for the majority. It does have some good aspects about it and I can see why some older pre-teens might like it but younger than that and older than that might struggle. For me the main thing the muddled delivery did was rob it of a sense of fun and prevent anything flowing.At times the tone is silly and childish, at others it is serious and intimate – but it never feels like it is all in one movie and again fragments the flow of it. The cast try hard to work with it but understandably they seem unsure of the tone of the film (a fault that must be put at Mayer's door) and it shows. McDormand is solid but unspectacular while Hawthorne clearly felt that turning up for his scenes was enough. The star is of course Jones as Madeline. She is a strong character but not developed beyond what she can do herself. I have no vested interest in the character but I was a little disappointed with what they did. Daniels is poorly used while De La Osa is purely annoying.This all might just about do the job for the older, pre-teen audience but younger won't care and older will want more than this delivers. A muddled film that never really settles down or decides what it is doing.