Lovable redhead Madeline, a young quick-witted orphan forever getting into trouble, faces her toughest task yet when Lord Covington (Hawthorne), the owner of her Paris boarding school, decides to sell without caring about the girls who live there (he’s so dastardly he even paints over the wall that marks how each girl has grown over the years).
It’s a cute film, based on the character from Ludwig Bemelmans’s books, that has Madeline planning an escape to the circus and stumbling across a plot to abduct the son of the neighbouring Spanish ambassador. McDormand is enjoyably stern as the headmistress, Miss Clavel, who often casts a disapproving eye in Madeline’s direction, while Hatty Jones (who made her first and only film appearance here) is just as you’d imagine Madeline to be – impish, fun and utterly adorable.
Is Madeline suitable for kids? Here are our parents’ notes...
None really, although younger viewers may be scared when Madeline is kidnapped with Pepito (they escape).
If you like this, why not try: Anne Of Green Gables, A Little Princess, I Capture The Castle, Matilda, The Parent Trap 1998,