(Twentieth Century Fox, 2005, 106 minutes) - add this to your Netflix queue
Wayne Wang directs this irresistible adaptation of Kate DiCamillo's children's book. This is the ulti-mutt shaggy dog flick, in which a lonely girl named Opal (AnnaSophia Robb) moves with her minister father (Jeff Daniels) to a small Florida town. Opal is feeling lonely and uprooted - until she collides, literally, with an outrageously friendly mixed-breed in the aisles of a Winn-Dixie store (hence the dog's new name).
The dog helps Opal adjust and make many new friends. Winn-Dixie has a charming smile, and proceeds to put one just like it on the face of everyone he meets. Some are quicker to respond than others, but resistance is futile - just look at that mug! That goes double for any cynic who thinks he won't be won over by this fun, moving story. It's a perfect cupcake of a family film that's sweet without growing cloying or sentimental.
Interestingly, the dog is played, not by a mongrel - which the story says he is - but by a rare, not-yet-AKC-recognized, French herding breed called the Berger de Picard, or Picardy Shepherd. In other words, the Hollywood Winn-Dixie is a purebred who only looks like a mutt (actually, it took three Bergers to play him).
The two-legged talent includes Eva Marie Saint as a librarian with lots of stories to tell, Cicely Tyson as a blind woman who sees with her heart, and Dave Matthews, making his acting debut as a musically-inclined pet-store proprietor. Strumming his guitar for an audience of animals in one memorable scene, Matthews is a latter-day Burl Ives. (Well, almost.)
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