Actress Kasi Lemmons may not have directed a feature film before this, but she certainly knows how. The world of 10-year-old Eve, blessed, like her three-times widowed aunt, with the gift of second sight, is never less than convincing in this drama, as we meet her philandering doctor father (Samuel L Jackson), her long-suffering mother (Lynn Whitfield), her troublesome younger brother and the older sister, who nurtures a somewhat unhealthy worship of Daddy. Jurnee Smollett is very cute and very good as the sensitive, but outspoken Eve and the film really revolves round her discovery of her father's true nature and her resolution to bring him down - albeit with the help of the local witch (Diahann Carroll). The film's a trifle slow but otherwise a vivid and flavoursome encapsulation of a sad but never depressing period in a young life.

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