***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C
starring Julie Andrews, Jeffrey Tambor, Sofia Vassilieva, Christine Baranski
screenplay by Janet Brownell, based on the book written by Kay Thompson & illustrated by Hilary Knight
directed by Kevin Lima
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but Eloise at the Plaza is made with far greater skill and care than a Disney TV-movie would normally warrant. Derived from the much-loved children's books by Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight, the film goes out of its way to reproduce their junior-NEW YORKER tone, only in a heavily formalist, hyper-real manner that thrives on perfect shape and well-timed movement. So accomplished is the look of the film that it makes one forget the mealy-mouthed sentiment of some of the dialogue–the clockwork archness of the production transforms its clichés into pure narrative form, so that they might give pleasure in their deployment and execution. In short, it's much better than it had to be and not half bad on its own terms, even by the standards of devoted cynics like me.
For the uninitiated: Eloise (played here by Sofia Vassilieva) is an elegantly rambunctious six-year-old girl who lives at the Plaza Hotel in New York and lives to cause trouble for its staff and patrons. She has a long-suffering nanny, of course, who simply goes by the name Nanny (Julie Andrews), and who spends much of her time attempting to dissuade her charge from getting into hot water; she also has a comic foil in Mr. Salmone (Jeffrey Tambor), the Plaza's extremely nervous concierge, who clings tenaciously to his hotel's five-star reputation. Eloise isn't above playing God with the guests: not only does she contrive a confrontation between a domineering mother and a sheepish young debutante, but she engineers a reconciliation between a bereaved young prince and his distant father. Thus she rampages through the Plaza's halls, flirting with danger but somehow always landing on her feet.
This could very easily be the stuff of treacly sentiment, and in all fairness, the script trots out some annoying believe-in-yourselfs and be-nice-to-your-childrens that under normal circumstances would be completely unbearable. But the film isn't really wrapped up in the substance of these old saws–it uses them more diagrammatically, as a mechanism by which people are hurled across rooms and through city streets so as to cause expertly-timed mayhem. The various story threads are merely an excuse to get the kinetic ball rolling, so that hugely caricatured people can use their bodies in ways both precise and outrageous for the amusement of a young audience. One doesn't remember the plot, one remembers the elegant mayhem, in addition to the sweetly thrilling sensation of being mastered by one very strong-willed six-year-old.
As such, the crew assembled are about as good as a TV-movie can get. Director Kevin Lima, though no master, has a real technical knack and manages to toss the camera around without giving the sensation of haphazardness. (Recall that he directed Tarzan, one of Disney's more kinetic animated movies.) In aid of this are costume designer Christopher Hargadon and production designer Tamara Deverell, who flawlessly reproduce both the look of the storybooks and the 1950s idiom from which they sprang. Going for a glorious artificiality, they accentuate Lima's formal flourishes and arrive at something resembling the Coen Brothers for tots. And the performances are hilariously apt across the board, from the unnaturally sharp turn of the lead right on down to the supporting players (all of whom seem to have walked in from the same casting session), with Julie Andrews especially distinguishing herself with her governess, who is light years away from the likes of Mary Poppins. The results, if slight, are unusually satisfying for the studio involved and shows that there they haven't completely stamped out creativity at the Mouse House just yet.
Eloise at the Plaza's 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is surprisingly vibrant, jumping off the screen without sacrificing the fine detail required to offset the film's zany elegance. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundmix is similarly quite adequate, if somewhat unimaginative–there's a heavy reliance on the centre speaker and not much on the rear channels beyond incidental music. Still, it's all clear and sharp and quite up to the job. The extras, meanwhile, are merely so-so. There's a making-of featurette (17 min.) that's the usual array of people patting each other on the back, revealing precious little technical detail and entirely too much gushy sentiment. In a similar vein is "Hilary Draws Eloise: An Art Lesson" (3 min.), in which illustrator Hilary Knight briefly runs down the techniques that drive his drawings–so briefly, in fact, that he doesn't really do them justice. Rounding out the package are an Eloise bibliography ("See the Books") and trailers for Home on the Range, Freaky Friday, Eloise at Christmas, and the upcoming Alice in Wonderland, Pocahontas, Lilo and Stitch, and Mary Poppins SEs.
88 minutes; NR; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1; English SDH subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Disney
