Because of Winn-Dixie (2005)

REVIEW

Based on the acclaimed book that’s a big seller among school kids. Because of Winn-Dixie is a movie with a heart. It opens with slapstick, becomes poignant and ends with a warm sing along uniting an eclectic group of once lonely people. As the girl narrating the story says, “Everything good that happened that summer happened because of Winn Dixie.”

Winn Dixie is an orphan dog claimed by a lonely young girl who names him after the supermarket where she finds him or, as she claims, the dog finds her. Opal (Anna Sophia Robb) and her preacher father (Jeff Daniels) have recently moved to the small southern town of Naomi, where he is trying to start a new life with a small congregation that meets in a former convenience store. Her mother had abandoned husband and daughter some years before, and Opal is without friends in the new town.

Winn Dixie is a sort of angel in disguise whose initiatives introduce Opal to a series of individuals, each with a loneliness of their own. Every life touched by Winn-Dixie and by Opal will be transformed, from the curmudgeon who is willing to provide a rent-free trailer to the preacher as a tax-deductible donation until Winn-Dixie comes into the picture, to other children a self righteous snooty older girl, Amanda, a younger child, Sweetie Pie, and the Dewberry brothers, two bratty boys. All of them appear antagonistic to Opal at the beginning, but she comes to see them in a different light.

It is the adults whose stories teach the big lessons, however. Winn Dixie first leads Opal to Otis (Dave Matthews), a guitar playing drifter and former prison inmate who manages a pet store for its owner and whose quiet music magically calms the beasts.

Winn Dixie brings Opal to the local library and its librarian, Miss Frannie (Eva Marie Saint), who hides her loneliness behind a rich imagination and a love of storytelling. She accepts Opal’s offer to be her friend, and the stories she shares soon draw in the aloof Amanda as well. The big lesson she has to share is that all of us know hurt in our lives, and we need to be sympathetic to one another.

Winn-Dixie will also lead Opal into an overgrown property that the Dewberry brothers warn her is the home of a witch who will eat her and her dog. The witch turns out to be an eccentric blind woman (Cicely Tyson) who says and demonstrates that she can see with her heart. She is transformed by the love of Opal even as she teaches important life lessons to her young friend, especially acceptance of others for who they are.

Because of Winn-Dixie requires a childlike suspension of disbelief, especially since the story, so simply told, takes on a mythic quality. We’re not expected to literally believe everything we see. But as Opal says in the voice over at the end, “It’s a good story. Right?”

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Also watch

• Big Fish (2003)
• UP CLOSE & PERSONAL (1996)
• Big Night (1996)
• UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN (2003)
• AN UNFINISHED LIFE (2005)