MovieChat Forums > Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn (2015) Discussion > Wasted effort

Wasted effort

posted 9 years ago by zerospin
3 replies | jump to latest

There is no point for this movie. When I heard Joel Courtney was cast as Tom Sawyer after Super 8 I was intrigued and expected to see a decent adaptation.

Unfortunately the writers/director decided to take the check list approach - the movie consists of scenes that do seem consistent with the book (It's a long time since I read it though), but they follow one after another without much connection.

It's like the movie makers went like this "Hey time for the fence painting scene!", "And now the funeral scene" "Now time for the lost in caves scene!" But it never comes together into a fluent movie.

There is no fleshing out of the town, the other characters, the historical setting, etc. It feels rushed, as if the characters were hurried by the director "go on, faster, we need to get to next scene within 60 seconds!".

There is one thing you could do with this movie to make it somewhat useful - add clips from it into a digital version of the book, instead of the illustrations found in traditional books... and even for this it's not that great.

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"

[–] bartallenii 9 years ago

Agreed. With the cast this film had, it should have been so much grander, taken a lot more chances, maybe even stray from the source material just enough to make it seem like a new film enough instead on the 1,000 straight up adaptation.

"Our cows make a decent living wage, so please, no tipping."

[–] TrueEssence 9 years ago

Agreed, I've said this a couple of times, but I liked the casting a lot actually. I thought the two leads were good, had great chemistry, I understood the idea to make them a bit older but it should have been a mini-series. The fact that they even tried to shoe-horn the beginning of Huck's story in there at the end, I've always loved him more and that irritated me. I thought Jake T. Austin did well in his role, such a cutie, and should have gotten his "part II" after "part I" focused on Tom and his adventures which like you said, were choppy.

It was enjoyable but there was too much wasted opportunity. Shameful really. I could use with a new mini-series for the boys with the same actors, mainly the leads, (except Injun Joe, I didn't understand that one =.= and Becky... well I think I could do with another actress but she was okay) but ya know, wishful thinking.

[–] Devans00 9 years ago

The film felt as if the editors went, oops, too long. Then randomly took out scenes.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn't confirm whether or not scenes logically transitioned or flowed from one to the other to make a cohesive movie. Scenes just appeared on screen.

My second major complaint after the distracting accents.

No two persons ever watch the same movie.