Madeline can do anything.

So she is reminded by her beloved teacher-guardian just before an emergency appendectomy. So she tells herself just before foiling a band of kidnappers. So she . . . well, you get the idea. Anything can and usually does happen to Madeline, namesake star of this charming film about a pint-sized, precocious orphan living quite happily (if a bit precariously) in Paris in the 1950s.

That she eventually ends up with just about everything a child could want -- close friends, a loving home, even a loyal, scruffy dog -- is hardly accidental. "Madeline" demonstrates in its own heartwarming, whimsical way that good things can happen if only you're willing to work hard and believe in them enough.

Yes, "Madeline" is a kids' movie -- and what, exactly, is wrong with that? In a cine-summer crammed full of rampaging reptiles and out-of-control asteroids, "Madeline" stands out mostly for the way it makes sleeping 12 to a room and marching and dressing in lock step seem like so much fun. (Indeed, I haven't so wanted to be an orphan since I was 6 and my brothers all discovered that I was afraid of worms.)

As such, the filmmakers were only being faithful to writer-illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans' beloved creation. Introduced in 1939's "Madeline," the plucky redhead was "the smallest" of 12 little girls living "in an old house in Paris that was covered with vines," under the watchful eye of Miss Clavel (Frances McDormand in this version), a kindly nun.

Several generations of little girls have fallen in love with Madeline, whose misadventures span six books. "Madeline" the movie brings together incidents and characters from four of them. Then it's all superimposed on a we're-never-really-very-worried-about-it-happening subplot concerning an old meanie (Nigel Hawthorne) who's trying to turn the girls out of their home.

The movie is fast-paced enough to please today's vid-kids, yet remarkably faithful to the look and feel of the books. Very small children might need their hands held during several of the movie's scarier moments. But because everything always ends very happily and amusingly (find me a recent "grown-up" film with a better, or better setup, line than a kidnapper's frantically uttered "Forget the nun, don't kill the idiots!"), it's doubtful that any long-term damage will result.

In fact, "Madeline" makes refreshingly few concessions to the in-your-face '90s. No drinking, no swearing and only veiled allusions to what a foul wheel of cheese really smells like.

The acting, meanwhile, smells just right. Oscar winner McDormand avoids all the overly saintly or silly stereotypes and comes off as a nice, competent person who also happens to be a nun. Madeline's housemates seem like real little girls, not a bunch of would-be dinner-theater Annies.