Opal (AnnaSophia Robb), is a 10-year-old girl who has just moved to a small town in Florida with her preacher father (Jeff Daniels). The move has caused Opal to lose all her friends, and now she must start all over again. Life has been a little tough for Opal, since her mother abandoned them when she was three. Opal's father asks her to pick up a few items for dinner at the Winn-Dixie supermarket. While in the store, a big dog is running loose in the store with clerks chasing after him. The store manager wants to call the dog pound, but Opal says that the dog is hers, and his name is Winn-Dixie. Opal take the dog home, and must convince her father to keep the dog. He agrees to keep the dog temporarily, until a new owner can be found. They go around town putting up posters of the dog, and later in the day Opal goes around and takes the posters down, because she secretly wants to keep the dog. Opal discovers that Winn-Dixie is able to make friends with everyone he meets, and now Opal has some new friends, because of Winn-Dixie. This is a good heartfelt story of the bond between a little girl and her dog. The story shows that a dog can bring happiness to a lonely girl and open up hearts of the people in town. I don't know how they did it, but the dog can actually smile. You can take your children to see this touching story. (20th Century Fox, Run time 1:46, Rated PG) (7/10)

The best thing I can say for Winn-Dixie is it is the best movie I have seen on an airplane in years, but that's more a critique of airline movies than praise for this one. It's a pretty standard kid's movie in which a lonely girl adopts a dog that results in adventures, misadventures and all sorts of friends. As I watched it, I saw lots of things that I would have thought were cool if I was a little kid, but as an adult who has seen this sort of thing many times before I really couldn't get that excited about any of it. If I hadn't been trapped on an airplane I certainly would have stopped watching, but since I stopped watching the last three movies I saw on airplanes because they were so painfully awful I have to give this one credit for keeping me mildly entertained for a while.

Opal Buloni (Anna Sophia Robb) moved with her preacher father (Jeff Daniels) to the small town of Naomi, Florida. Her mom had left them. He sends her to the local Winn Dixie grocery store where a dog is going wild. Opal pretends to the owner naming the dog Winn-Dixie. The dog is so rambunctious that her father calls the pound. She convinces him to keep the dog and gets a job working at the pet shop with Otis (Dave Matthews). She befriends blind hermit Gloria Dump (Cicely Tyson) with a tree and librarian Miss Franny Block (Eva Marie Saint) with a tall tale of an encounter with a bear.

Anna Sophia Robb is a terrific child actress. She has great charisma and has very good range. She's great as a tomboy as well as with the other girls. This is a movie about lost and regret. I love all of the characters and they are played by solid actors. Maybe Otis could be played by somebody more menacing but Dave Matthews does get the damaged part of the character. It's a nice story of people struggling to move on from their past and it's got a nice cast.