In an odd piece of miscasting, Renee Zellweger plays British children’s book author and illustrator Beatrix Potter.
The artist/writer goes from obscurity, living with her privileged but closed-minded parents, to celebrated literary figure and land conservationist.
Guiding the formulaic biopic proceedings is director Chris Noonan (“Babe”), emphasizing the doomed romance of Potter’s love affair with her publisher Norman Warne (Ewan McGregor).
Norman’s tie-wearing sister Millie (Emily Watson) also has a crush on Beatrix.
Although the movie is strictly by the numbers, Noonan captures Potter’s difficult early 20th century social milieu that she penetrated by way of her gifted imagination for the farm life of the English Lake District before her death in 1943.
“Miss Potter” is made to measure for mothers, aunts, and grandmothers who would share Potter’s books, such as “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” with tikes of any generation.
Rated PG. 92 mins.
