you have NO heart! That scene where Pee Wee gets hit by the car...I'm not sappy at all, but Mickey Rooney is just amazing. If the boys all kneeling and praying for him to live doesn't tear you up...!
What an excellent movie!
It got to me all right. I was practically vomiting at the hokey, maudlin ending.
shareWell, aren't you too kewl for skewl! Yes, I understand that it'd be 'hokey' and 'maudlin' for a few cynics. But that's the great thing about diversity, i.e., chacun à son goût.
shareYou have no cause to judge me a cynic. Plenty of films get to me, but I just considered this one contrived and uber-manipulative tugging at the heart-strings. That doesn't work for me, but, as you wrote, chacun à son goût.
shareI haven't seen BOYS TOWN in many years. That said, I have little patience for those viewers who would label a movie "corny," "manipulative," or whatever simply because it was made in a different era and/or it aspires to make the viewer feel something.
I recall Mickey Rooney's crying over the little boy as being quite intense for such a young actor. I think the thing in the film that moved me most, though, was the fact that the boys were not forced to change their religions in order to stay at Boys Town. Such tolerance we think of as being more characteristic of our own time, but watching this and other "old" movies I'm often surprised at how forward-thinking many individuals back then were.