While girls are raised at ever earlier ages in this country to be obedient little consumers, and to compete with and put down their fellow females, Holly Hobbie And Friends: Fabulous Fashion Show has something completely different in mind. Here the girls figure the world out their way, along with conceiving their own clothes from scratch, and friendship rules with difference celebrated as exciting rather than alienating.
In this latest small to big screen Holly Hobbie adventure, the girls are preparing for a fashion show to help raise money for their NYC school. Holly assembles the Hey Girls Club, including her burb pals Carrie and Amy, and neighborhood chum, Portia. While they busy themselves with fashion reinvention from lost and found objects ranging from buttons to colorful rags, urban snob Portia mopes and puts down the out-of-towners for being too ordinary. But instead of letting the catfights ensue, Holly takes up the challenge of investigating what’s ailing Portia. And she discovers that mean girls are hurtful because they’re hurting, and understanding beats squabbling.
For Holly and friends, life is also about adventures and new experiences exploring the world around them, not couch potato consumption. Though what’s ailing the planet in their assorted discoveries and in need of a bit of wise kid healing, would have made this a deeper story. Meanwhile, the supportive adults around them provide self-confidence and positive roles models too, as nonconformists in their own right who don’t let convention get in the way of being open to unique attitudes and creative individuality. Holly Hobbie And Friends, a Sisterhood Of The Homemade Pants for the female small fry set.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Unrated
3 stars
DVD Features: Inside Outfits Game; Singalongs: Home Is Where Your Hat Is, Let Your Inside Out; Trailer.
