Gigi: God's Little Princess

Combining live-action and animation, this adaptation of Christian author Sheila Walsh's book of the same name finds a young girl named Gigi transported into an animated fairy world after she snoops around the house and discovers that her parents have not bought a Princess Pinky Starr Castle for her birthday. Enslaving her cat, Mr. Fluffy, Gigi embarks on a tour of all the castles in the kingdom, looking for the Princess Pinky Starr Castle—with its abundance of jewels and monstrous bathrooms—but while she stumbles onto many others, none but her ideal choice will do. It's not the film's stilted acting, nor even the fact that Gigi's quest for her fabled castle feels like a child's dream version of an Amway brochure, that's bothersome here; rather, it's that the unsubtle core message (“to subtly teach girls of their importance and belonging to the King of all kings”) fails to address, let alone admonish, Gigi's greedy, spoiled behavior. Even when her daddy shows up to explain “the Big Message”—which I thought might at least partly relate to being less selfish and perhaps nicer to cats—the revelation is that she's already a princess, as are all her friends, because God is their King. Faith is perfectly fine; being a brat is not. DVD extras include a “making-of” featurette, screensavers, and games. Optional. Aud: P. (A. Cantú)