Starring Abigail Breslin, Julia Ormond, and Chris O’Donnell. Rated G. Opens Friday, July 4, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

This moviegoer knows nothing of the American Girl series marketed by Mattel, except that they are, apparently, expensive and tangentially related to stories written by Valerie Tripp. The result—shot in Ontario by veteran director Patricia Rozema with some occasionally period-deaf dialogue by writer Ann Peacock—is a little dull around the edges. But it has zero product placement and is built with a certain sincerity that marks it as old-fashioned—in the good, Frank Capra sense. And the fact that so few films are aimed at smart girls, let alone stories with social and political undertones, makes Kit Kittredge an occasion for gentle cheer.

Set in 1934 Cincinnati, the tale stars Little Miss Sunshine’s increasingly assured Abigail Breslin as the title character, a nine-year-old would-be reporter whose journalistic instincts are piqued as the effects of the Not-That-Great Depression come crashing in around her.

Nice-guy dad (Chris O’Donnell) loses his car dealership, and her otherwise serene mom (Julia Ormond) is eventually forced to take in boarders. These include a deserted homemaker (Glenne Headly), a mobile librarian (the egregiously mugging Joan Cusack), and an itinerant magician played by Stanley Tucci, who adds some edge. When Jane Krakowski’s needy dancer asks the gruff magician if he has ever levitated a dance instructor, he says, “Yes, but it’s a long story.”

The Kittredges also befriend two underage wanderers (Max Thieriot and Willow Smith), a problem when the area’s growing hobo army is blamed for a string of unsolved burglaries. Kit’s keen instincts, dovetailing with new president Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal goals, gear up to prove that hobos, like most people, deserve a fairer shake than they are getting from the local Republican establishment. Does that relate somehow to the corporate-strangled environment of today? Yes, but it’s a long story.