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Kids’ eye view:
Stuart Little is an adopted mouse who lives in New York City
with Mr. Little and Mrs. Little and George and the new member
of their family, Martha Little. He saves a new birdfriend
named Margalo from Falcon who is, well, a falcon. Stuart,
Margalo, and an unwilling Snowbell (a cat) are wrapped up
in an adventure of friendship, deception, fur and feathers.
You know the saying “Big things come in small packages”?
Well, it’s true. Stuart can do many things, from flying to
skateboarding. The animation was so real that at first I thought
Stuart was a real mouse!
This is a cute movie with lots of laughs and it’s cool.
Parents’ perspective:
Many of the best children’s authors use animals to convey
some of the tougher lessons in life. It always seemed easier
to bear when the protagonist was not human. Okay, so we have
to do some suspension of disbelief. Come on, a spider that
can spell, an orangutan that wants fire, medieval mice, rabbits
and badgers strategizing against rats, weasels and other unsavories,
or better yet, a Wookie? If you can buy into a walking carpet,
can’t you imagine a mouse who lives with a human family as
one of their own?
Technically, this movie is a lot of fun to watch. The animation
is incredible in its realism. You almost believe you are really
watching a cat and a snazzily dressed mouse walking down an
alley having a conversation. The list of people who worked
on the animation goes on for pages. Animation by Sony Picture
Imageworks and creature effects by Jim Henson’s Creature
Shop make it a bit easier to let go of the “real” world.
Geena Davis plays the perfect overprotective, oversweet
mother (which means she irritates the snot out of me) and
Hugh Laurie portrays the perfect father trying to help
his son grow up and meet life’s challenges. Along the way
there are good guys (a mouse and a cat???), a really evil
bad guy (Falcon—you could almost see Hercules’s Hades
the first time he spoke), and then there’s Margalo. As the
first friend he can see eye-to-eye with, she does for Stuart
what his father can’t. She sees every day as an adventure
and she advises him to go into the world “Head up, back straight
and heart open.”
With plenty of humor to get you laughing, a stereotypical
“Little” family, and a cast of man, beast, and fowl, this
particular animal story deals with lessons of courage, forgiveness,
and even a “Little” growing up.
—Samantha, Caleb, Karen, and Brian
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While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
