It's funny how this movie escaped my radar. Back a few years I was actually an AVID reader of the Molly Moon books. And this movie being made 2 years ago when I found out stunned how I had no idea of it before. And after watching it, I can see why. It was a very poor adaptation, and it seemed either the budget was low (I mean, the studios were MINUSCULE compared to the big names) or the screenwriter wasn't caring that much. It had a bit of a clunky pace and it struggled to stay on tracks. While some scenes seemed word by word from the book, with even some funny nods (like a flip of a page in Molly's notebook shows a sketch of the book's cover) while some scenes were jumbled out of place. And I really don't see why, when the movie was barely 1 hour and a half, when 2 hours could've covered the book page by page.
However, the movie material was actually good. Raffey Cassidy was DELIGHTFUL. Her acting felt very natural and she was really pulling out how I imagined Molly. The other children were really natural at their scenes, when we know how hard is for children to act, the younger, the hardest. As a stand-alone movie, it felt harmless, but fun and enjoyable. As an adaptation, I felt SO MUCH disregard by the screenwriter I feel really sorry for the book and I sure wish the writer felt disapppointed, her series was marvelous and could've done much better as a cartoon.
