MovieChat Forums > The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993) Discussion > I don't get the criticism....

I don't get the criticism....

posted 16 years ago by BadWebDiver
3 replies | jump to latest

Reading most of the professional reviews and user comments here and elsewhere on the net, it seems to me the biggest complaint about this movie is that's it's "too comic", "is very violent for a kid's story", "because it's made by Disney, it's too entertaining and fun, not a serious social commentary on the evils of slavery" - and most astonishing of all; "doesn't follow the tone or style of the book at all"!!!!????

Excuse me, but what book are folks reading??? The version of "Huckleberry FInn" I've read at least, that appears to be the exact tone of the story. It's a fun, exciting, humerous adventure story - with social commentary and critique **contained** inside of it. Need I quote the famous author's note on this work, where Twain essentially says that trying to read deep themes into his work means you deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered?!! Yeah, it's meant to be a joke, but you at least get his intention.

So basically the reasons given as to why this movie is so bad, are reasons that would actually apply to the book itself just as well. To me that indicates that the movie got it right - warts and all, faults and everything. The problem is that most critics wanted this to be **more** close to their abstract interpretation of the novel that the novel itself actually is. They wanted this to be a dramatization of an English Lit essay of the story rather than of the story itself. And the fact that the movie doesn't try to do that (a good thing in my opinion) makes this a "bad" version of the story. On the contrary, I think that makes it a brilliant version of the story.

Yes, the original novel is a classic piece of literature that handles some serious social issues - but does it in a fun, accessible, humerous way. It's social commentary hidden in a boys'own adventure yarn. Surely a good movie adaptation (which I think this is) would preserve all aspects of that. It's ridiculous to blame a movie for not doing more with a theme than the book itself does.

I am - SUPERFLUOUS!!!

[–] fleurfairy 15 years ago

I totally agree. I don't understand why this film is so criticized. I think Elijah's acting is great, Robbie Coltrane and Jason Robards are terrific, and the script is decent. Some people are never happy.

[–] daiquiri6 14 years ago

Bingo! ya nailed it.

[–] Newski_the_Hippie 13 years ago

I don't think you understand the novel at all, or the criticism of this movie. The issue is not that the movie is not graphic in detail, or heavily thematic, but rather the way it carefully and calculatedly tiptoes around anything like that. It even avoids racism while talking about the subject of Slavery.

The Movie makes several major departures from the book, many of them eliminating the social commentary and satire. Which is what I rather have, as opposed to the same events I already read. For example, in this version of Huck Finn Pap simply steals Huck away. In the original Novel, the court GIVES him custody. What's missing?

This idea that the court believed so wholeheartedly in this antiquated idea that a parent is right one to raise the child, no matter how bad that Parent is. This is lost.

What's also lost is the realism. You see, this movie was made as if it were Tom Sawyer. Tom Sawyer is a romantic American Fantasy, a Childish adventure. Huck Finn is a satire on that kind of writing. See, Tom is the person who would call a shack mansion. Huck would be the one to agree that it's a mansion, but still see a shack.

Huck's moral dilemna is made simple, too simple as a matter of fact, and Jim is made into a very bright young go getter. Why? Because Jim being gullible might come of as racist, yet it is important to show just how slavery has affected him, and will even as a free man.

You talk about critics wanting an Abstract interpretation, but that's because you read the book as a simple children's fantasy. I don't know how, because the version that the Critics want is closer to the source material. Huck Finn is a novel filled with complex themes and disturbing imagery. If you did not read that, you must have either been simply skimming through....