Tween Dreams and Rescue Teams: American Girl Corinne Tan the Movie Review

We revisit the American Girl universe for the first time in years to watch American Girl: Corinne Tan The Movie. We may have struggled to find things to love in this short movie aimed at tweens, but you’d better believe we found a spot for podcast fave John Cho in our reimagined HBO casting.

Previous episodes we mention

• Maryellen: Extraordinary Christmas Review 
• American Born Chinese Review 
• Harriet the Spy Review 

Inventing the Perfect College Applicant from New York Magazine on January 29th

The Other Two available on Max

They do still make American Girl books! Corinne to the Rescue 

American Girl: Corinne Tan The Movie made us think of these movies and shows for grown ups:

• Bad Moms
• Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin on Disney Plus
• What I Learned in Avalanche School by Heidi Julavits in the New York Times 

We cast the gritty HBO reboot of the movie with:

• Awkwafina or America Ferrera as Corinne’s mom
• Simu Liu or John Cho (podcast fave!) as Corinne’s dad
• Ariana Greenblatt as Corinne

Contact us and subscribe to our newsletter at www.myscreentimetoo.com

Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter or by email at myscreentimetoo@gmail.com

Transcript

>> Deborah: [THEME MUSIC] Hello and welcome to It's My Screen Time Too, the podcast where we review the programming the other critics ignore: stuff made for kids. Find out what to watch for family movie night, what to avoid altogether, and you'll want to watch alone, voluntarily. I'm Deborah.

>> Katie: And I'm Katie.

>> Deborah: And I have three kids, ages fourteen, eleven and eleven.

>> Katie: And I have two kids, ages eight and five. Today we are reviewing American Girl: Corinne Tan The Movie. Why are we reviewing it, you might ask? Maybe our first ever five star review was given way back in episode ten for a little movie with a big title. You ready for this? It's a mouthful. An American Girl Story: Mary Ellen 1955- Extraordinary Christmas. It needs both a dash and a colon.

>> Deborah: Rolls right off the tongue.

>> Katie: Yeah, it's really easy to search back in our Google Docs for it, too. I'm like, let me just enter any combination of literally any words. It has since come to our attention that this movie is no longer available for streaming and we needed to give american girl branded IP another chance to get those top rankings. It feels only right.

>> Katie: What else feels only right is that we go over a little bit of our individual histories with the american girl brand. Was american girl a big part of your life growing up, Deborah?

>> Deborah: Just the books. I had like one friend who had the dolls and that was it. And she was an only child from a more affluent family than everybody else. I think the dolls were around, but they weren't a big thing where I grew up. But I, in the last two years, I went to New York City, was there meeting my goddaughter's family, who's very into american girl dolls. And I went to the american girl store for the first time. Wowie zowie. That was an experience. It was incredible. I would have loved it when I was a kid, but, ah, we didn't have the stores when I was a kid.

>> Katie: We are old. So the american girls dolls that existed when we were young were only the historical dolls, which they've branched out a lot since then. I had one of the dolls. I have three sisters, so we all got a doll. But my mother was also like, these accessories are insanely expensive. And because she is an artistic genius, she was like, I will just handcraft every single one of these accessories out of sculpy clay and paint them for my children, which I love. That is just this beautiful thing. And I remember my jerky self as a child being like, I just want the real versions. But now looking back on it, how sweet. But also, that's totally the reaction my kids would have to something like that.

>> Katie: Were you, a Molly, a Samantha or a Kirsten?

>> Deborah: Boy, I think I liked Samantha the best.

>> Katie: M. She was like, what, early 1900s New York. Was that her jam? Okay. She had those boots with like the perfect little buttons all the way up.

>> Deborah: Okay, which doll did you have?

>> Katie: Molly.

>> Deborah: Okay, nice.

>> Katie: Love Molly. I perhaps love her more now, even when I did when I was young, because she has less of the historical flouncy dresses. Everything feels a lot more modern because she's from World War II. And I'm sure at the time m I was like, she has an actual paper bag for her lunch, whereas this doll has a lunch pail. But I'm really portraying myself as a really awful kid. All right, let's move off this topic. All right. But the movie we are covering today, Corinne Tan The Movie, it's an hour long movie that premiered on Amazon prime on July 28th of 2023. Even though the historical dolls are the ones we're most familiar with from our childhoods, this movie is based on the contemporary american -  No, they're called girl of the year dolls. One girl of the year has been featured per year since 2001. Did you have any idea about this line of american girl dolls?

>> Deborah: Not really. I thought they were more like, you get a doll now that looks like you.

>> Katie: Yeah. Which is a whole separate offshoot. Like, they have their fingers in a lot of different pots, which I guess makes sense because they're owned by Mattel now. All right. Anyway, Corinne was girl of the year in 2022. The movie is aimed at the early elementary set, kind of that aspirational, I'm a tween, but I'm imagining what it'll be like when I'm a teen sort of, audience. The plot summary, according to Amazon Prime is: Relocating to her stepdad's home in Aspen, 13 year old ski enthusiast Corinne Tan is struggling to adjust after her parents divorce, while her ten year old sister has already embraced her role in this new blended family. When Corinne finds purpose training a rambunctious search and rescue puppy named Flurry, she begins to understand the importance of family, perseverance and self acceptance.

>> Deborah: Well, let's talk about our general thoughts about Corinne Tan -  American, Girl Corinne Tan The Movie.

>> Katie: Extraordinary Christmas! No, sorry, go on.

>> Deborah: Did you like it?

>> Katie: No, I did not like it.

>> Deborah: Oh, ok.

>> Katie: This is super saccharine and I just think we've watched a lot better tween geared shows. Give me an American Born Chinese or even a Harriet the Spy over this any day. How about you?

>> Deborah: I think I liked it better than you. I didn't think it was extraordinary, but I thought it was serviceable. I got into it. I liked the characters. I had a lot of problems with it that I want to talk about with you, but I would say overall, I liked it.

>> Katie: All right, let's get into some of those problems, because that's what I'm gearing up for.

>> Deborah: Okay, so why wasn't this for you, a grown up person? What was hard to connect with it for you?

>> Katie: there are just no surprises here. It's all very rote and predictable. Why? It's because they haven't planned this as a family watch. It's only for the tween audience, even more than your average modern preschool show is for preschoolers, because modern preschool shows are also kind of sideways made for the grown ups who are watching it, too. This was not in their game plan that adults would be watching this, which is fine. There should be space for shows like those to be made, especially as your kids get older. But they weren't even trying for my attention or eyeballs.

>> Deborah: I also knocked off points for predictability. It was so predictable. Like, you could see every plot turn from a mile away. And also, I would argue that we need more plot points other than parents divorces. Maybe because I just read a couple of YA books for a book, review roundup. And that is just such a young adult fiction trope where the kids parents get divorced. And I'm sure it's, like, relatable. A lot of kids have to deal with that, but there are other problems that kids have to overcome.

>> Katie: All right, I'm just trying this on, but what if there's a continuum? like, you start out, you're in preschool, you're watching your first movies, and one of the parents, or both of the parents always dies because they're always orphans in those movies. But then you get a little bit older, and for whatever reason, they reduce the trauma level, and no parents die. They just get a divorce. It feels like it should be going the other direction, no?

>> Deborah: Yeah, that is pretty a harsh way to start out, but maybe we get all the hard stuff out of the way first.

>> Katie: Yeah, divorces feel easy by the time you're watching those.

>> Deborah: So was there anything for you as a grown up viewer of this movie?

>> Katie: First point, all the food looked delicious. Corinne's mom is in the process of planning her menu to open a restaurant, and I say just replace all those interminable scenes of skiing and or ice skating with food prep, and I, am in.

>> Deborah: Nice.

>> Katie: Also, the concept of a true calling is, you could say, the oft stated theme of this movie. It really resonates with me in an anxiety producing way, as I imagine it does with a lot of stay at home moms as their kids reach school age. Did you find Corinne's insistence on finding her true calling to be sad or compelling at all?

>> Deborah: It stressed me out, too, because, okay, my 14 year old is not anywhere close to looking at colleges, but I have some friends and acquaintances whose kids are on their way to college or in college, and it sounds like kids have to decide their majors, like, really early. Whereas when I was a college student, you could go, a full two years undecided and take your general requirements. And now the message I'm getting from parent friends is that stakes are a lot higher when you enter college and you're supposed to know right away. So, yes, Corinne's struggle in this movie definitely made me feel those same feelings I feel when I think about my kids going off to college and having to decide their lives when they're so young and unformed.

>> Katie: Yeah. And you know me, I am pretty much always constantly low level worried about the college admissions process, even though my kids are five and eight. So from a very young age, I have been worried about helping them to find their thing. Listeners, I know this is super neurotic and awful, and I don't want you to come away with the idea that I'm forcing my children into a million things. I am gently trying to expose them to literally every activity on earth in the hopes that they will find one that they want to pursue and put on a college application. It's screwed up. I'm aware. I'm aware. It's fine. We're fine.

>> Deborah: You should read that -  sidebar -  you should read that New York Magazine article about the college admission wizard. People pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their kids into Ivy League schools. Okay, it was out a couple weeks ago.

>> Katie: I don't need my kids to go to Ivy League schools, but I just keep hearing these horror stories about how kids with, like, weighted GPAs over 4.0, which, by the way, did not exist when I was a child, are not able to get into our state schools. Like, they're rejecting those kids because admissions are so insane. So I'm already panicked about it. Anyway, this is not the point of our review. Let's move on.

>> Deborah: Okay. Well, what I enjoyed as a grown up was the adults' questions of what is their calling? Who are they? What are they going to do with their lives? Okay, first of all, there was, like, the dad, who's a ski instructor, who lives in a pretty regular house. I assume he got to keep the house in the divorce because it seems like the mom left him because she's already remarried to a guy named Arnie. She lives in a much fancier house than the original childhood home that Corinne feels so bad about leaving. Even though her room looks awesome, she won't unpack. Sort of as a rebellion to having to move in with the stepdad half the time. And then the mom used to be an accountant, and now she's pivoting her career and she's going to open a, ah, restaurant. So she's testing out all these delicious looking recipes. But I had so many questions about the economics of these marital circumstances. Was she the breadwinner when she was with the ski instructor dad?

>> Katie: Yeah. Because I doubt full time ski instruction is supporting a family of four in Aspen. Yeah.

>> Deborah: in Aspen, yeah. He doesn't live in Aspen, though. He lives in, like, I don't know, a suburb or something. And then how rich is Arnie? Was Arnie like, marry me and I'll just support your dreams? Because it's like, you can't just open a restaurant. You have to get funding or bank loans or whatever partners to buy in. So I wanted to get the spreadsheets of each household budget and find out what money is coming in from whom and what they're doing with it.

>> Katie: Okay, I think I figured it out. They need to provide, like, when you get an book and they provide files as supplementary material. They need to provide supplementary spreadsheets so you can second screen the numbers while you're watching the movie with your kids.

>> Deborah: Yeah, I was a little stressed. Like, is Corinne's dad going to have to sell the house and move out? Is he no longer able to afford? Cause, like, the mom's not gonna pay him alimony if she's opening a restaurant and gave up her day job.

>> Katie: Are we sure that the dad is still living in the childhood home and hasn't downsized to an apartment? Because I got the impression from Corinne's reaction that she was mad enough that it seemed like she was never going back to that house. I assumed that the dad was just in an apartment rental.

>> Deborah: Yeah, well, they showed a shot of kind of a split level looking home. Was that where they ate, like, mac and cheese around the coffee table in

>> Katie: front of television while playing video games? That's how they signal the bad parents.

>> Deborah: That's a good segue into, the cast and character standouts and what we thought about the cast. Was there anybody we loved or particularly hated? I have a note. Why is the mom a shrew and the dad a doofus? Totally playing into the stereotype of, the incompetent divorced dad.

>> Katie: Yeah. It kind of goes along with our comments about predictability and the plot. The bumbling slacker first husband is just such a trope. I feel like they ultimately tried to rescue him at the end. They gave him a little budding friendship with the new stepdad, which was weird in theory, but the way they played it was kind of adorable.

>> Deborah: But he keeps calling him, like, different plays on his name, Arnie, which is kind of funny.

>> Katie: But then at the end, when the two grow to respect one another, then Arnie feels free to give him nicknames. I don't know. I was reaching, okay? I was reaching for anything. Can I gripe for a minute about the mom?

>> Deborah: Yes.

>> Katie: All right. I have a little parenting quibble with Mrs. Tan, and I'm sorry I didn't write down her first name. Weirdly, I know Arnie's. I think he's the only adult's first name I remember. Why is she so encouraging of the younger sister's ice skating? But she just gives a flat no way to Corinne wanting to train a rescue dog. She's like, I'm comfortable with my ten year old child ice skating six to seven days a week for hours in an attempt to become a competitive ice skater. But my other daughter wants to train dogs to do good for humanity, and I insist that she's just not ready for that level of responsibility.

>> Deborah: I know. And like, the pipe dream of becoming a competitive figure skater, two people get to do that. And there are so many dog trainers in this world that's a much more realistic career path.

>> Katie: Plus, it's an altruistic volunteer position. Why would you quash that in your child? I just found it to be so, like, I know they really wanted to highlight the contrast between the dad and the mom, but I found that to be so weird and off putting. Like, you're not supposed to prioritize one child over the other. And to me, she was so clearly picking favorites in a really gross way.

>> Deborah: Right? And no mention of, like, how much is the 6 day a week, 5 hours on the ice, private lessons going to cost?

>> Katie: It's okay. Arnie's got it.

>> Deborah: So any thoughts on the writing? I have some thoughts on the dialogue.

>> Katie: Please give me some.

>> Deborah: Well, the dialogue was super wooden, which I think the Mary Ellen 1955 Extraordinary Christmas was also. I think that's just kind of the style of the american girl franchise.

>> Katie: Yeah, very earnest. Very earnest.

>> Deborah: And a little bit of a throwback to sort of what Nickelodeon shows were like when I was an adolescent or pre adolescent. But the thing I did enjoy about the dialogue is the younger sister who speaks like all in Internet slang and emojis. I thought that was cute. She was funny.

>> Katie: Yes.

>> Deborah: Okay. Structure is an hour long movie really a movie, or is this to fool younger kids into thinking they get to watch a whole movie?

>> Katie: Yeah, I was thinking about this, but what else do you call it? Like, unless you're going to commit to producing six of these in a row and just call it a season of a show and each quote unquote episode is about a different doll.

>> Deborah: I mean, this is the length of an after school special. It's not an after school special, but that's where an hour long standalone program for children fits in in

>> Deborah: my world.

>> Katie: Do we call anything specials anymore?

>> Deborah: I don't know. I did like the length. I didn't want to watch more than an hour of Corinne Tan.

>> Katie: I'm with you. That was plenty.

>> Deborah: And I didn't want to watch more episodes of it either. So I guess because it wasn't very good, this was the perfect length for it.

>> Katie: Okay, I didn't put this in the doc, but I have to ask, do you think that the reason we were so effusive about Mary Ellen of the long title is that a, we were so early in our critical experience and b, it was a historical plot? I think both of those things must have played into my enthusiasm about it because that took place in 1955, as the title tells us.

>> Deborah: Well, we can't watch that again because it's not on streaming any longer. Thanks a lot, Amazon. But I think it was better. But maybe because it was episode ten of our podcast, we were like unseasoned critics and just didn't know better. But this had potential. The cast was excellent, especially the young actors who played Corinne and the little sister. I thought they were great. They didn't have a lot to work with in terms of dialogue and plot.

>> Katie: Yeah, we've seen a lot of young actors come up through. I mean, I would argue that the Disney Channel original movies are like several steps above this in quality, but they come up through that system sort of like in the very hammy community theater acting phase. And then they go on to do better things as they're older and they have more opportunities. So it's definitely not down to either of these adorable actresses.

>> Deborah: Right. Well, what did you think about the setting of Aspen or whatever mountain they told us was Aspen?

>> Katie: I just think they wasted a lot of time on exterior shots and, like, shots from far away of people skiing and or ice skating. They're like, come on. We could have tightened this up to about a 40 minute special. I didn't really need all of that extra.

>> Deborah: Totally true.

>> Katie: All right. What makes the show okay or good for kids? Even if it wasn't necessarily okay or good for us? Do you want my bullets first? All right, here are my bullets. I got multicultural representation. Ding.

>> Katie: Showing a close sibling bond. They're not always fighting by default. That's nice. Representation of a healthy, blended family. They're not really healthy all the time, but they get there and you get the sense that they're willing to work on it. Four. These kids have so much independence. They're, like, zipping to and from the ski mountain on their own. At 13 and ten, I think that's pretty impressive and maybe something that parents could look at and think, maybe I need to expand my child's bubble a little bit. So I liked those things. How about what makes this inappropriate or otherwise bad for kids?

>> Deborah: Thinking that you can just get six day a week figure skating lessons by being cute and saying pretty please in an ice arena in front of your rich stepdad? Totally unrealistic. I mean, I get kids movies. Shows are unrealistic, but that one kind of stuck with me.

>> Katie: Yeah. I also need to reiterate that I don't think it's great to get kids thinking they need to find their true calling quite so early. I think they should just be concerned with being kids for a little bit.

>> Deborah: But I also thought the time where Corinne just goes with the, ski patrol trainers was a little off. I mean, dog trainers have a really specific protocol that they're supposed to go to, I think, which I know from watching one documentary film. I don't have any experience in this area, but I thought that was a little, well, totally unbelievable.

>> Katie: Yeah. Flurry's training process was ultimately very subpar, and if Flurry was put on the mountain to find me, if I were lost, I would probably die

>> Deborah: At the very beginning,

>> Deborah: when the two sisters meet Flurry, they do ask permission to pet him, and that was good modeling for how you're supposed to encounter an unfamiliar dog.

>> Katie: Yeah, that's true.

>> Deborah: What adult movie or show does this compare to?

>> Katie: So the example of the bumbling slacker first husband is the one that clearly stuck in my mind. And the example that I came to most readily was David Walton from the Bad Moms movie And just how truly horrible he was. So that's all I got for that. How about you?

>> Deborah: I thought about Jimmy Chin's documentary on Disney plus. Have you ever watched, like, I didn't write it down, of course. It's called, like, jimmy Chin and the great outdoors or something. And it's all this, every episode tells the story of somebody who had a bad accident or scary encounter in the wilderness doing some extreme sport or another. And one of the episodes is about an avalanche. It's really good. I think you and Kevin might like it.

>> Katie: That sounds terrible. And like, I'll never want to leave my house again, Deborah.

>> Deborah: I don't know, but it's all people doing extreme sports. Like, you're not an extreme sport kind of person. And then it also reminded me of this Heidi Julievette's article that I read in the New York Times Magazine a number of years ago about how she went through avalanche training and how scary it is. I'm kind of fascinated with mountain, culture because I live in a flat state, so I like to watch and read things about, people doing extraordinary things in the mountains. Were you able to cast the gritty HBO reboot?

>> Katie: All right, this is as far as I got. What happens when an awesome, together funny woman (doesn't really describe the mom from the movie, but it's okay stay with me) marries a total square? So I want Awkwafina as the mom and Simu Liu as the dad. And I don't know who the square would be, but we just watched, Shang Chi and the Ten Rings so that's why they are both on my mind.

>> Deborah: Have you seen The Other Two on HBO Max?

>> Katie: Not yet, but everyone says it's incredible.

>> Deborah: Yeah, that actor plays a funny part, like a cameo in, I don't know, the third season. That's good.

>> Katie: Well, I loved him as a Ken on Barbie.

>> Deborah: Okay. I also thought of some Barbie stars. I wanted to see America Ferrera and the young actor who plays the daughter, like the sullen, anti Barbie daughter. I would like to see them in the mom and Corinne role. And then this is, like, stereotypical type casting, but I just want to see John Cho as a ski instructor.

>> Katie: I know. I was like, I can't cast John Cho as the bumbling husband, though. Like, can you picture him bumbling?

>> Deborah: I cannot really picture him loosened up in that way.

>> Katie: You know what?

>> Deborah: But I would like to see it.

>> Katie: Let's give him a chance to spread his wings. Yes. Let's cast John Cho against type. We believe in him that much.

>> Deborah: Was it better when we were kids?

>> Katie: We would totally

>> Katie: have had this movie on VHS. My parents would have bought it because they saw that it said american girl on it, and then we would have watched it 20 times in the basement, and my parents would never have anything to do with it beyond having bought it. They would never have given it another thought in their lives. So just a snapshot of how things worked when we were growing up. Was that better? Was that worse? What do you think?

>> Deborah: I think I'm going to argue that it was better when we were kids because the american girl phenomenon was really more a book based. Not as much. I mean, it was about the merchandise, but it wasn't as much about buying. Every single accessory.

>> Katie: Wasn't it?

>> Deborah: I don't know. I was satisfied with just the books. Maybe I was a weird kid.

>> Katie: No, I love that. And I especially love that for your parents because it was so expensive. But I feel like it was very much like, oh, we will sell you every little thing individually and just charge you excessively. I think that has always been their MO.

>> Deborah: But can you even get a book about Corinne Tan?

>> Katie: I'm sure maybe, I don't know. We'll look that up and make, note of it in the show notes.

>> Deborah: Okay. Would you ever watch this alone, voluntarily?

>> Katie: No, I would not. No. You?

>> Deborah: No. It disappointed me, for sure.

>> Katie: Yeah. Especially after that extraordinary Christmas. Okay. Ratings from one to five.

>> Deborah: I would give it a three out of five stars.

>> Katie: Yeah. I gave it a 2.5, and I felt like that was generous. See it or skip it.

>> Deborah: I think it's a see, especially for families with younger kids. And the dog. We didn't even talk about the dog. The dog is a big part of this show, and my kids love watching shows, even that are too juvenile for them, that involve dog actors. So I have that recommendation, too.

>> Katie: it's a skip for me. Well, thanks for listening to our review of American Girl Corinne Tan. Next week, we'll be back with a conversation about screen time in the news. If you enjoyed our show today, please recommend the show to one friend you think would enjoy it, too. We love growing our community of parents for sanity and screen time. Want more words about screentime? Subscribe to our newsletter@myscreentimetwo.com. Tune in next time for more real talk about the movies and tv we watch with our kids because we have to. And sometimes because we like to. Bye

>> Deborah: bye.

>> Deborah: [THEM MUSIC]