A good children's movie isn't afraid to be a little wistful. You can have your dog-run-riot-in-the-supermarket scene, your comical kiddie name-calling. But add a tinge of sadness and regret and you're onto something.

"Because of Winn-Dixie" gets that. Kate DiCamillo's award-winning novel about a girl and the dog she found at a certain supermarket has been charmingly adapted by the folks who produced "Holes," which is the new yardstick against which smart kids' entertainment is judged. "Winn-Dixie" is occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. But what works, what will connect with parents and their 5-12 year olds, is that hint of melancholy that floats around the edges of this feather-light comedy.

Opal, played by Annasophia Robb, is a lonely little new kid in a one-horse town named Naomi, where her daddy, the preacher (Jeff Daniels), is ministering a storefront church. She doesn't know anybody, and nobody wants to know her.

Until this stray critter wanders into the local Winn-Dixie.

"It's a dawg," the store manager hollers. "We cain't have no dawgs in Winn-Dixie!"

If you can't find a little Southern-fried pleasure in that line, you haven't put in enough time in the South. And maybe ya'll ought to find yourself another movie.

Opal tells a fib to save the dog from the dog catcher. Actually two fibs.

She hassles Daddy. "Can we keep him?"

And she names the mutt after the place she found him.

Funny thing is, the dog is the secret to Opal's future happiness.

"Just about everything good that happened that summer," she narrates, "happened because of Winn-Dixie."

Winn-Dixie is a real social butterfly. He helps her meet people - the aged librarian (Eva Marie Saint); the blind old recluse the local kids call a witch, Gloria Dump (Cicely Tyson, quite good); and the drifter (singer Dave Matthews) who somehow has been put in charge of a pet store that looks as if it was designed more to delight your typical 6 year old, not to sell animals.

Opal discovers the storytelling skills of the librarian, the wisdom of regret from the blind woman, and the singer-drifter's gift for entertaining animals.

And she finds a way into her preacher-dad's broken heart.

All because of you-know-who.

The dog, who is his own special effect (how did they make him smile like that?) makes preacher's sermons more entertaining, Miss Dump more outgoing and the neighbor kids more inviting. Once you see the dog, you'll understand.

A very good cast and decent source material allows director Wayne Wang ("The Joy Luck Club" is still his best credit) to soft-sell the sentiment and just make this a straight-forward coming-of-age tale.

Not everything about it works. The kid is, truth be told, more adequate than good. The idea of an aged white librarian suggesting "Gone With the Wind" to an aged black recluse is laughable to anybody with half a clue about the Southern race relations the book and film are otherwise smart to avoid.

But Daniels, Matthews, Saint and Tyson are all solid. The dog is a delight and the milieu perfect, even though they filmed this rural Florida story in Louisiana.

Forget the modern setting. This is nostalgia, pure and simple.

Because is proof positive that nostalgia and dogs go together like Winn and Dixie. We remember the dogs who chose us, not the other way around. And you can't remember a great dog without just a touch of regret for the lost childhood, the lessons you can't unlearn, that your long-ago mutt represents.

TITLE: "Because of Winn-Dixie"DIRECTOR: Wayne WangCAST: Annasophia Robb, Jeff Daniels, Eva Marie Saint, Cicely Tyson, Dave MatthewsRATED: PGGRADE: 3 stars (on a scale of 5)