' Kit Kittredge: An American Girl' (G)(out of four)

Deep down, we feel for young Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) -- cheering along with all her victories and mourning all the heartaches that send this little girl swinging between emotional extremes.

When she proudly waltzes into the office of her hometown newspaper determined to get a story published, we can feel her heart tighten up, her pulse quickening with anxiety and anticipation. When she stumbles upon two homeless boys wandering her Depression-era suburb in search of a work-for-food agreement, there's something heartwarming about the way she politely introduces herself and invites them back to discuss the matter with her mother.

And then there are the foreclosure signs that Kit starts to see with terror as they are erected in the front yards of her friends and neighbors. When she volunteers one day at a soup kitchen and looks up to see her own father shuffling into the mess hall, it's almost audible: The sound of a young girl's heart breaking. "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl" is an emotionally honest and affecting journey. It's also a most peculiar concept for a summer blockbuster, with an improbable backstory. It is a movie based on the popular American Girl book series, books sold by the same company that offers mothers and daughters dolls for around $100 a pop (one can currently buy Kit the doll, and the related paperback, online for $90).

For every doll there is a related, true-life story, and Kit's historical backdrop involves the Great Depression -- an ironic fact, when one thinks about it, since the real-life Kit could have never afforded to purchase a plastic Kit.

For a company so clearly determined to convert its luxury doll business not only into a book franchise and a tourist business but also into a movie franchise, "Kit Kittredge" is an intriguing -- and timely -- inaugural big-screen project. While the American Girl dolls cater to an affluent clientele, the first film is clearly being made with the economic struggles of the flyover states in mind.

To wit, young Kit lives in the heart of Cincinnati and we see the Depression less through the eyes of panicking mortgage brokers and unemployed fathers than through the confusion, mystified and terrified eyes of their children. At school, our heroic youngster watches as the wealthy kids in suits and ties mock the disadvantaged young girls who arrive wearing dresses made out of chicken feed bags.

Back at home, she watches as friends are forced to leave the neighborhood, their mothers forced into shelters and their fathers leaving the state altogether to find work. She keeps hearing the tirades of adults who are terrified of the dangerous "hobos" that are starting to flood the streets, robbing passersby of their money and valuables. Soon, she's witnessing the systematic breakdown of her own home, as dad leaves for Chicago, mom is forced to welcome in boarders to make the rent, and a hobo has apparently stolen her family's valuables.

Over the next few weeks and months, Kit gradually finds herself going to school in feed bags, becoming friends with her mother's boarders -- which include a magician (Stanley Tucci), a dancer (Jane Krakowski) and a "mobile librarian" (Joan Cuasck) -- and becoming friends with the young "hobo" boys who her mother has agreed to feed. In an amazing -- and distinctly old-fashioned -- twist, Kit is friends with the daughter of the man who owns her family's mortgage, and is able to get a month's reprieve from the banker thanks to this face-to-face contact.

It's entirely possible that "Kit Kittredge" could have come off as condescending -- this story of a well-to-do girl experiencing the adventures of poverty -- if director Patricia Rozema had not so clearly presented the drama from the perspective of a lone little girl. Children rarely know all the details, but instead rely on emotions, and so Kit's gradual progression is entirely believable. She matures in front of our eyes, evolving from a state of teary-eyed humiliation to one of adaptation and survival.

The movie works best when it's about Kit the child, and not Kit the amateur investigative reporter and detective. Surely as a means of providing audiences a happy ending, the movie devolves when Kit's mom (a tough, tenacious and tender Julia Ormond) is robbed, the police botch the investigation, and Kit sets out with her friends to solve the murder, Nancy Drew-style. While this third act imparts an important message -- to never judge a book by its cover, or a person by his social status -- it is nevertheless an unwise, and unneeded, detour into pure escapism.

Unneeded because the movie has already proven by this point that it can handle the trickier, more tragic material with style and grace. Here we have an all-too-timely story about a group of young girls persevering through unprecedented hardships, arriving in theaters at a time of sweeping financial hardships. For a holiday film released by a major studio, "Kit Kittredge" is admirably topical, empathetic and emotional. It's a smart treasure of a thing.