A disgrace to the novel.


Now before you go berserk I am complaining about the writing of the movie, NOT the acting.

I just watched the film in class after reading the novel, and I have to say that I can't believe Disney would do this to the novel. The novel is considered a classic and Disney butchered it almost to a point almost beyond recognition. Why would they do something like that? Twain's book was filled with messages, hidden meanings and irony while Disney ignores all of them in favor of a typical attack on slavery that's been done ad nasuem. I think Mark Twain's chief of ordinace applies more to the film than the novel (Anyone trying to find a moral will be prosecuted, anyone trying to find a plot will be shot).

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haha you have no idea how much i agree with you. We also just watched the movie in class and it is rediculous how far from the novel the movie is. There are so many parts in the movie that had NOTHING to do with the book. I also hated how they completley left out the ending. They didnt talk about the Phelp's farm at all or have anything to do with rescuing Jim. Also whats with Tom Sawyer not being in the movie? he was a main character in the book! I was seriously mad when the movie ended, and so were my class and teacher.

::Innocence Has A Power Evil Cannot Imagine::

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Tom Sawyer was in the film - he yelled "Go for the glory" at the very beginning.

LMC xxx

I pull the trigger till it goes click.

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haha yes i hardly call that being in the movie.

::Innocence Has A Power Evil Cannot Imagine::

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im glad he wasnt in the movie tom sawyer annoyed me in the book. I liked this movie until the ending, which was changed too much from the book (except tom of cousrse). I thought a lot of the irony was kept up until the ending though.

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ok. so i didn't see this movie. my teacher told us never to see any Huck Finn movies because they basically ruin the book. and i think this one would do just that. Tom Saywer isn't in the movie? umm, yeah. there is a problem with that, seeing as Tom is a major part of the development of the themes in the book, and he is a foil character to huck, also illustrating the themes of the book. this is rediculous that he isn;t in the movie. why would they do that??

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This is funny. This is one of the few cases I actually like the movie better than the book. Of course, it did help that I grew up with the movie and loved it as a kid, but I only read the book for the first time a few years ago. I read it independently and I think I missed a lot of the "hidden meanings". I got annoyed that Tom came in and stole the thunder from the more familiar character of Huck, and I didn't understand the whole drwan-out game with passing things to Jim under the wall (or what was it?) instead of doing it the easier way. Anyone care to expand?

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With Tom and Huck "helping" Jim escape, I think Twain was trying to make us realize how ridiculous the want of adventure is in serious circumstances. I don't remember exactly, but couldn't they have basically opened the door and let Jim walk out to escape? Anyways, Tom was being a silly fool as he dared to play with Jim's freedom in that way, because he was too obsessed with having an adventure. If you pay attention to Huck's simple sentiments during that part of the novel, he doesn't understand why they need to jump over all of these hurdles to help Jim escape. Twain shows through Tom how silly it is to romanticize a situation to make life more exciting. Huck provides Twain's feelings on the circumstance, and every circumstance that happens in the book. Hope that helps, and if anyone is a book aficionado, do correct me.

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[deleted]

hahaha, yeah. At one point, Tom and Huck had too much trouble trying to bring a huge stone into Jim's shed/jail that they had Jim slip his chain out from under his bed, come outside, and help them bring the stone into his shed. After he helped them bring it inside, he slipped his chain back under his bed leg. I thought that was very funny.

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hahaha, yeah. At one point, Tom and Huck had too much trouble trying to bring a huge stone into Jim's shed/jail that they had Jim slip his chain out from under his bed, come outside, and help them bring the stone into his shed. After he helped them bring it inside, he slipped his chain back under his bed leg. I thought that was very funny.

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Same here. I love the book and I love this film too. It's called an adaptation for a reason. Same thing with a A little princess (1995). You can love a book and a film based on it even if they cut stuff and/or change things.

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[deleted]

Who are you kidding? The only butcher was that Tom Sawyer wasn't in the film; other than that, it was pretty much right on.

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Oh come on. It wasn't a disgrace. It was a good movie. You aren't going to get hidden meaning and the like in a Disney movie for kids. It was enjoyable and I liked it. The book was awesome too, and I hope someday they will do a re-make to fit the book exactly, but until then I will enjoy this movie which is fun to watch. Elijah Wood is a great actor.

The enemy’s gate is down.



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[deleted]

You haven't seen the one staring Ron Howard have you?

two miles under the desert are the essential components of a death machine

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[deleted]

The book Huck Finn started out as a sequel to Tom Sawyer and became something entirely different. It has one huge problem for Twain - why indeed would a runaway slave go downriver? The problem is never truly resolved but what the heck - it's a terrific book and was the first to give a true American his own voice in which to tell the story. For that alone, it's a very important novel indeed.

But the re-introduction of Tom Sawyer is nothing short of irritating, as he tries to take back the narrative from Huck. However, the very end is an absolute triumph - and we do see that in the film, as he "lit out for the Territory". Forgive me - that's a quotation from memory.

The end of the film needed a climax which the book spurns (or which Twain could not manufacture from the materials at hand), and the one provided by this film does have the merit of making completely clear what Huck has had to learn - that, when all is said and done, Jim is a man, not a slave, and as such, worth dying for. Jim is a person in his own right, and Huck is not his superior.

Yes, the book is more complex than the film, with more ambiguities - but this film pulls fewer punches than most and, I believe, is in honourable attempt to bring a sprawling, episodic book with a major plot problem to a new audience.

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I think this is a good, fun Disney film and makes an entertaining version of the source material. I'm glad they took out the long, quite boring Tom Sawyer bit at the end, to be honest, but I posted to say that my American Lit. professor gave a great lecture a few years ago about the ending of the novel. He said that it's generally very unpopular; people see it as a major letdown to the ideology of the rest of the book, and he had a theory as to why. Because Huck is the ultimate in idealism: he's free in a way that is unequivocally American and pure and of course, ultimately impossible. So, the first two-thirds of Huckleberry Finn are true escapism, for all their (hotly denied, of course) moral stance. And in the last act, Twain's cynicism comes through - as a Reconstruction writer, he knows that this uncompromised freedom and equality is a pipe-dream, and he won't let us get away with the fantasy he's painted for us. So, in the last act, he lets Tom Sawyer appropriate the narrative: he's a product of cliché and hierarchy, the sort of idealist who doesn't really want the world to be free and equal, who sustains conflict for the sake of self-dramatisation. It's a disappointment because it's meant to be, Twain is saying, wait, stop, you're not Huckleberry Finn, you're just Tom Sawyer. And so am I.

'The world is changed by unreasonable men' - George Bernard Shaw

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Thank you very much - that's a most interesting theory.

I would personally argue that it doesn't quite fit the chronology of Twain's life. Had it been just a little later then, yes, I think this would have a lot of mileage, and I am sure there is much to think about even if I don't quite support it. There is a great deal of darkness in the book, though, so perhaps your Professor is on the nose! Ah, the joy of Lit Crit!

Again personally, I think Twain had little choice but to go the way he did - and in any case, he enjoyed writing about Tom and was happy to get back to him. It's the change in Huck that's the most disappointing element of this undeniably great and important book.

How did your Prof account for the last lines, do you remember? Is that purely a dream that will not bring Huck the freedom he desires?

I think I'd better re-read the book. I'd like to look at the transition in narrator before I comment any further.

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I must concur that this is the worst film adaptation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that I have ever seen (and I have seen several of them). Elijah Wood was not too young, rather he was too treacly and precocious. The fact that Huck is shod through most of the movie was more than a little jarring. I think that Brad Renfro was great as Huck in Tom and Huck. His natural accent is closer to what I would expect Huck to have. It's really too bad that he was unknown when this movie was made.

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I thought the Disney Huck Finn was surprisingly good. As to Tom Sawyer missing, I thought Elijah Wood played Huck as a cross between Huck and Tom. Some of his scenes are actually Tom Sawyer scenes, the opening fight and of course getting shot at the end. Also, Elijah added a lot of Tom's spunkiness into Huck's personality, so yes, it's no such much the brooding Huck that Brad Renfro played. Second, no less than Ernest Hemingway said you should just skip all the silly Tom Sawyer stuff at the end of the book. So maybe the director followed Hemingway's advice and just skipped it.

A big difference is that the book is told in first person point of view, so some things are going on that Huck doesn't realize. Like the fact that Jim manipulates him. In the novel, Huck never realizes that Jim played him into helping him escape -- like how about not telling Huck he saw his father dead on the boat. Huck goes down river with Jim to get away from Pap, but Pap was already dead! Jim lied to Huck because he needed Huck to pretend he was his owner. Also, Jim guilt-tripped Huck. "There goes Huck, my one and only friend." In the novel, I didn't realize it because Huck doesn't realise he's getting played. But when Courtney Vance says the lines, you can tell he is guilt-tripping Huck because he knows Huck is planning to turn him in to the slavecatchers. So the Disney film cleared that up.

A disgrace? I think we should all be careful about getting too high and mighty about any Mark Twain story. Fact is, Twain finished his 'classic' with a string of fart jokes. So you might as well say Twain butchered his own novel, which I think he did on purpose just to moon all the literati who had cows over the totally unserious ending. So watch out you don't find Mark Twain's big fat butt asking you for a kiss in the next life.

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I think this adaptation of Huck Finn turned out about as good as could be expected considering Disney's usual treatment of literary source material.

If you think of it as Walt Disney's Huck Finn rather than Mark Twain's, it's actually pretty watchable. The production is competent, with an excellent music score and beautiful location-based cinematography. And frankly, Twain's novel was all about slavery. It was the driving theme in both the book and the film, although Disney takes a predictably sanitized and heavy-handed approach that Twain never stoops to.

Also, Mark Twain didn't have a foxy, young Anne Heche.

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