EDDIE AND THE FAIRY GODPUPPY

Old-fashioned, warm-hearted mush. Eddie is a freckled, red-headed, trouble-prone, nine-year-old orphan, who thinks no one will ever adopt him (too ugly, too pesky). Then a puppy appears out-of-nowhere; housepainter Mr. Caw suggests that, since Eddie was wishing for a fairy godmother (""to help me get out of this place""), he's a ""fairy godpuppy""; and Eddie, though skeptical, lets himself believe. The children's joint efforts to hide F.G.P. (as Eddie cryptically calls the pup) are pretty flat, as such things go. And Eddie's constant run-ins with grouchy housekeeper Mrs. Mundy are pretty creaky too. But there is one bit of poignant reality here: Eddie's false hope that Mr. and Mrs. Caw will at least take him as a foster child, and Mr. Caw's recognition that he was responsible for misleading Eddie in the first place, and for hurting him in the second. The ending is pure Hollywood fairy-tale: super-nice director Miss Susan, Eddie's protector, set to marry and leave the orphanage, marries (a freckled, red-headed man) and takes Eddie and F.G.P. to be her instant family. Unbelievable but not unlovable.