_Little Women_ is the pre-eminent T4T romance of 19th-century American literature: the charming tale of Jo and his sisters, and his will-he-won’t-he bond with Laurie, the tall girl next door. This cast is unbelievable! I just want to put their names here with exclamation points but their names are listed on this page already, so here are some exclamation points for you to put next to them as a craft project: ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

And the chemistry between these actors is just astonishing, especially in light of the stiff staging, stiff cinematography, and stiff dresses. Beth and Meg don’t have quite enough screen time to fully establish themselves, and the movie assumes enough familiarity with the book that you’ll be confused about the physics of the world if you haven’t read it (like, how the heck these people in this fancy mansion with a rich aunt who jets around Europe are considered poor). But even if you don’t come in loving these characters, you will by the time twelve filmic months have passed. Everyone either absolutely nails their signature line (“Your one beauty!”) or is Claire Danes and cries and there is nothing better than a Claire Danes cry.

If the movie had ended with a rousing rendition of “Deck the Halls” it would have been cheesy as heck but if you can’t do cheese, you’re not going to be into this Wisconsin of a film anyway. That’s where it should have ended. Unfortunately there are two more acts to go. After the success of _Little Women_, Lou Alcott rushed out a sequel, called _Good Wives_. Which, if you couldn’t tell from the title, is garbage. This is the source material for the second part of the movie.

In _Good Wives_, every character becomes vastly less interesting. Amy, in fact, becomes so much more dull that they have to bring in someone else to play her. Claire Danes is captivating whenever she looks at anything and it counts as chewing scenery when she slightly wrinkles her forehead, so Beth dies. Laurie grows a landlord villain denial mustache and into a trope. Jo has to travel to New York to become boring, but at least he gets a cute gay kiss in the rain with his German tutor, Professor Bhaer (Gabriel Byrne is miscast, he's totally an otter). Some people are sketched out by their age gap, but it’s just different between dudes.

The actors are still (mostly) the same brilliant actors, though, so despite the source material it never becomes less watchable than a middling Masterpiece Theater episode. It’s quite relaxing, assuming you sleep through it. And it fulfills the promise of early 90s girl power media, where irrepressible forces of nature ultimately learn to repress themselves while maintaining a high-wattage Betty Crocker wink. 6/10.