Confession: I’ve never read Louisa May Alcott’s classic nor have I seen any prior Little Women films, so my frame of reference is limited.  That said, I contend I am the perfect viewer, the empty cipher coming in with no preconceptions.

I loved the film.  Greta Gerwig’s rendition is beautifully rendered, lovingly crafted, and anchored by a stirring performance by Saiorise Ronan as the proto-feminist sister Jo.  Gerwig plays with timeline, so you see the four March sisters in different parts of their lives, a technique most effective for Jo, whose rebellious desire to be an independent creative thinker beholden to no man is effectively juxtaposed by her later, harder and more lonely life.

Gerwig’s eye is expert and many of her scenes are breathtaking.  In particular, Jo and Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) on the hillside as she recognizes her love for him also means the death of her art, and Jo and her sister Beth reading on the beach, joined as one by her writing.  Yet, the film is also earthy and sharp.  When Jo watches the manufacturing of her first novel, Gerwig plays it almost as if it were a form of childbirth.  Indeed, there is no more protective mother than Jo as she negotiates her percentage and rights with her publisher, the very wry Tracy Letts.

There are minor problems.  Two of the four girls are underdeveloped (the film, and I can’t believe I am writing this, should have been longer), and the mother (Laura Dern) is so angelic she barely registers at all.  Moreover, an attempt to have one of the sisters (Florence Pugh) play pre-adolescent results in a jarring scene where she is so malicious to Jo that it could only be countenanced were it the act of a very young child.  Since Pugh looks older than that, it seems unforgivable.  Finally, there is the father, who returns from the Civil War and lo and behold, it is none other than . . .  Bob Odenkirk, wearing a Union cap better fit for a trick ‘r treater.  I imagine it seems like niggling, and I was prepared to overcome the dissonance by the exertions of his performance, but upon his entry into the film, there is no performance.  He has perhaps 2 or 3 terse lines.  So, that was weird, akin to introducing Will Ferrell in the role and then making him mute.

These are minor nits.  This is a splendid picture.

Jennifer Lopez is a revelation, but what she reveals is what we already knew from the Super Bowl; she has a super-human ability to keep a middle-aged body toned, flexible and sexy.  Bravo, but as Demi Moore proved in her stripper film, solid moves on the pole can only take you so far.  Lopez is cunning, and commanding, but she is little more, and she cannot make up for the amateurish performances of her cohorts, a bunch of dancers-with-hearts-of-tin who sign on to her scheme.

When the movie focuses on the crime, it is light, watchable, brisk entertainment.  The strippers engineer a lucrative con outside the club, where they butter a mark up, slip him a roofie, max out his credit card, and when he wakes up, he assumes he had the night of his life (and if he is shocked at the price, what is he going to say?)  There is real humor and juice in these scenes.

Unfortunately, they are interrupted by the dull story of our protagonist Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians), a girl who just needs a Mommy (Lopez) to show her the tricks of the trade.  Wu is not a very good actor, and her little girl lost routine seems silly (strippers are many things; guileless ain’t one of them).  Wu’s naivete, however, is a necessary predicate to the lamest part of the film, because first time feature writer-director Lorene Scafaria is set on saying something about family and loyalty and the rest. When the gals are all together, their essential goodness and mutual support flows freely as they bestow gifts upon each other and extol the virtues of famil . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Scafaria also uses the interview/flashback technique to tell the story, so we get the prim, white journalist (Julia Stiles) interviewing Wu after it has all gone to shit.  I suppose Scafaria wanted to juxtapose Wu’s hard-bitten travail with that of a privileged, educated writer, but the exchanges are clunky.  An example:

DESTINY What’s your name again?

YOUNG WOMAN Elizabeth.

DESTINY Did you grow up with money, Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH We were…comfortable.

DESTINY Right. What’d your parents do?

ELIZABETH My dad was a journalist. And my mom’s a psychiatrist.

DESTINY Where’d you go to school?

ELIZABETH Brown. For undergrad.

DESTINY What would you do for a thousand dollars? Of course the answer depends on what you already have and what you need.

This might have worked if Wu herself didn’t seem like she was rejected from Brown but got in to Bryn Mawr instead, and if Scafaria fleshed the conversation out a little bit (ELIZABETH:  “I need it.”  That sounds like want any criminal would say, no?).

Instead, it just lays there, flat, interrupting the caper and making both characters even more tedious, if possible.