American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success Blu-ray Movie Review

Too sweet and too sour.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman June 26, 2015

Grace Stirs Up Success is the latest from the American Girl series, a collection of films that champion positive messaging to young girls, encouraging them to reach for their dreams, put their best foot forward, and set a positive example for others to follow. They're manufactured feel-good stories, however, the sort that don't so much inspire for their authenticity but for the core center message inside. In Grace Stirs Up Success, it's a trip to Paris, an appearance on reality television, and endless smiles and countless examples of the perfect life -- where a pie in the face and a momentary break-up with best buds represents the pinnacle of life's stresses and challenges that get in the way of a finely-tuned rise to the top -- that represent the movie's extreme push to nearly unhealthy fantasy. The film feels disingenuous at best, even as it obviously means well. Bright colors, sugary Pop songs, and the perfect picture of the pleasant family give the movie a phony edge about it, a feeling like the core message of determination, hard work, and selflessness couldn't carry the movie by themselves. In short, the movie doesn't necessarily reflect the real world; it's a modern storybook fantasy with a good, positive core but too much sugar coating of reality to really make it stick beyond the moment.

Everything's peachy because I'm Grace and my life is a scripted masterpiece!

Grace (Olivia Rodrigo) loves to bake. She spends much of her free time in her grandparents' (András Bálint and Krisztina Peremartoni) small New England bakery where the appliances don't work well but love and the scent of tasty treats fill the air. Grace wants a new bike for the summer, but her parents (Virginia Madsen and Rafael Edholm) tell her she'll have to earn the money herself. She starts up her own bake shop, working out of her grandparents' kitchen, and her cupcakes are an instant hit. And then she's hit with the news: she and her family will be spending the summer in Paris to help out her pregnant aunt Sophie (Lili Bordán). It just so happens that Grace's uncle Bernard (Fabrice Michel) owns a small Paris bake shop. Grace wiggles her way into his kitchen but doesn't make a good first impression, leaving her performing menial tasks around the store instead of baking up her favorite treats. But when she seizes an opportunity to expand Bernard's business, things begin to turn around for her future cooking fortunes.

While that unrealistic perfection that defines the entire movie -- where various crises are solved, personal problems are averted, lessons are learned, and everything is made right by only a trip to Paris, an apprenticeship under a master baker, an appearance on a reality television show, and unwavering support from smiling friends and family -- might engender a stand-up-and-cheer vibe about it, one cannot help but feel that the movie isn't doing its target audience any favors with its overly sweet fairy tale story. Perhaps worse is that the movie operates on the most basic of premises, where everything is so cut-and-dry that the basic center details lose their resonance to the movie's flatness. Every dramatic morsel and each new step towards success are so finely tuned to fit the narrative that the movie never feels organic, only pushing towards the greater idea that failure is a momentary obstacle, that success comes easily, that learning a little life lesson or applying some cliché-riddled suggestion is all it takes to make life work. Sure, the movie's target audience doesn't want dark and brooding and realistic, but Grace Stirs Up Success crosses far over to the other side, presenting the total opposite which seems just as dangerous. Painting the world as this perfect can't be any healthier than painting it as hideously as possible.

The movie's central theme may be found in the French saying je ne sais quoi, which translates as "I don't know what." The movie uses that phrase, combined with the art of baking, as a metaphor for life, essentially saying that following a recipe might produce satisfactory results but doesn't distinguish one dish (or person) from the next. A great dish (or life) needs something more, a personal touch, a spark, a feeling, a risk, something that adds some flavor (distinction), something that sets one apart from the next and goes beyond the standard to produce a unique end product. That's fine. It's solid enough life advice. It doesn't get lost in the movie -- it's very clearly pronounced -- but it does have that feeling of forced phonies about to it, that unavoidable sensation that it works in a perfect world but not in the real world. However, the target audience should enjoy the movie well enough; there's plenty of teeth-rotting Pop songs, bold colors, and tasty treats to help mask the overpowering flavor of the movie's core themes which, contrary to its suggestion of the value of je ne sais quoi, feels straight out of the book.

American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

An American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success features a largely satisfying 1080p presentation. The image offers a steady diet of crisply defined details; it's sharp and consistently so, a little flat by way of its digital nature but never to the detriment of raw detailing. Whether baked treats, intimate facial features, fine fabric textures, or good-looking bits of charmingly rough brick and concrete accents around Paris, the transfer impresses across the board when it comes to detailing. Colors are bold and loud, sometimes a touch garish but never to a disturbingly overpowering extent. Reds in particular appear overly saturated, but the wild array of other hues -- greens, blues, lavenders -- are often gorgeously precise. Skin tones push a little warm as well. Moderately heavy noise and blink-and-miss-it aliasing appear throughout, but the image suffers from no other noticeable anomalies. It's not perfect, but it looks good in total.

American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

An American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success whips up a high quality DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Music is the most aggressive player here. Whether airy score or the aggressive beats of its high intensity Pop-Rock "you can do it!" anthems, Universal's lossless soundtrack enjoys a crisp, well defined edge, excellent clarity, natural aggression, fine spacing, and a quality low end support. The track features a handful of well pronounced effects and ambient support pieces, largely in the way of uncooperative and rattly appliances in the grandparents' bakery. Some nice little external effects help define the film's key locales, including New England, Paris, and the reality TV show stage. Dialogue never presents any problems with placement, clarity, or prioritization save for a few lines right at the end when it goes noticeably soft and shallow. Altogether, however, this is a winner of a track from Universal.

American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

An American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success contains a few fluff supplements. A DVD copy of the film and a voucher for a UV/iTunes digital copy are also included in the Blu-ray case.

• Girls About Town (1080p, 3:19): The girls visit Budapest and the piece offers a few trivia morsels about the European city.
• Meet Bonbon (1080p, 1:32): A short look at the film's star dog, including training and handling on the set.
• Masterchef Junior (1080p, 1:22): A behind the scenes look at baking on the set.
• Doggie Day Spa (1080p, 1:10): A behind-the-scenes look at the girls' dog bathing business.
• Playing Dress Up (1080p, 1:10): The girls appear in various costumes.
• Previews (1080p): An American Girl: Isabelle Dances Into the Spotlight, An American Girl: Saige Paints the Sky, and An American Girl: McKenna Shoots for the Stars.

American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

An American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success doesn't present a true depiction of reality, but it does, at least, have its heart in the right place. The message is a fine one; it's the presentation that hurts it. The target audience probably won't care or notice, but it might be good to follow the movie up with a discussion that life isn't a perfect walk in the park, that its obstacles aren't always barely noticeable bumps in the road, that everything can't be fixed by a trip to Paris, a high-energy Pop song, a cliché, and an appearance on reality TV. Universal's Blu-ray release of An American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success features solid video and audio. A few short extras are included. Skip it.