From the old house covered in vines to the 12 little girls in two straight lines, director Daisy von Scherler Mayer (Party Girl, Woo) remains true to the droll details of Ludwig Bemelmans's classic picture books. The casting is inspired, too: newcomer Hatty Jones makes a sunny, insouciant Madeline, and dimpled Frances McDormand plays wimpled Miss Clavel with spunk.

Shot on location in Paris, the film cobbles together four Bemelmans favorites to allow Madeline beaucoup adventures. Still, not everything falls into place as neatly as that familiar queue of straw-hatted schoolgirls. The patchwork plot has a harried, episodic feel, and some of the gags lack the European flavor of the original works. Most amusing are Madeline's run-ins with a funky wheel of cheese and the bratty son of a Spanish ambassador (Kristian De La Osa, a brooding, pre-pubescent Brando). In all, Mayer may have found her girl in Jones, but the film's clunky structure is one fix even our courageous heroine can't undo.