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Reviews
Captain Scarlett (1952)
I wish they would remake it
This should have been a classic swashbuckler in the tradition of Zorro, Robin Hood, and Captain Blood. It has a good, traditional, premise (young nobleman returns home to find his home and land taken over by the bad guy, and then tries to get back his land, right wrongs, and free the oppressed, all while making loyal friends and falling in love), but the poor acting, directing, and way too cheesy script (so bad it's funny) ruin this movie for the sophisticated viewer. I loved this film as a child, however (the poor acting and super cheesy script did not bug me then), especially the fact that he teaches the girl (Princess Maria) how to sword fight (in one of the few good lines in the film he comments that no one has taught her anything useful - her skills up to that point being embroidery, dancing, etc).
I really wish Disney or some other company would remake this movie in to something better, instead of remaking good old films into something worse. Saddly, I fear this film has been forgotten by the big studios and that I will have to content myself with the fact that many of the things I enjoyed in the movie as a child (like the sword fighting Princess, and the way they trick the bad guys in by all dressing as Captain Scarlet) have been used since in other, better made movies.
Penny Serenade (1941)
Cute at first, but the end cost the movie all its appeal for me
The first 3/4 of the movie is cute, but nothing to rave about: boy meets girl, they eventually falling love, marry, she becomes pregnant and everyone is happy. Then disaster strikes in the form of an earthquake causes her to miscarry and her injuries are such that she will never be able to have a child. They are sad but stick together through it, and they eventually put their lives back together again. They decide they still want a child so they adopt. When they get to the adoption agency, a kind adoption lady presents them with a baby girl and they fall in love with the child and decide to adopt her. You see the adoption process and how happy they are. It is cute to see them learn how to take care of a baby. Their financial situation changes when the child is about 2, and before the adoption is final, the adoption head honchos threaten to take her away, because now they are poor. A stirring speech by Grant (and the faith of the kind adoption lady) convinces said honchos that Grant and Dunne are still good parents and that their child will never starve. They are allowed to keep the child, who we next see as sweet a little girl as anyone could wish for. Now as I said, up to this point, everything has been fine, some downs, but they've worked out their problems and are a happy, functioning family unit. As a whole the movie up to this point has been as cute and sweet as their little girl.
Then BAM, the next minute the kid is dead (no warning to the audience that the kid is sick, just BAM dead of something or other). They are too grief stricken to help each other, and instead tear themselves and each other a part. It's only been THREE DAYS since the little darling's death, and they are splitting up because they just can't handle the grief (this explains why Dunne is packing to leave Grant throughout the current time scenes in the film). Dunne wrote to the kind adoption lady telling her their tragedy as soon as the girl died, and before Dunne has a chance to leave Grant for good, the adoption lady informs the couple (who have yet to make up and are just as miserable as ever - remember it has only been three days since their little girl died) that the agency just got in a sweet little boy (two years old, golden curls, the sort of kid they thought they wanted to adopt before they saw their baby girl), and would they be interested in seeing him? Now suddenly, everything is a-okay, and they have plans to turn their daughter's room in to the perfect room for a little boy. Nothing, has been resolved in their marriage. Before they found out about the boy they were in the middle of deeply grieving for their daughter, in fact they were so grief stricken I thought for sure they were going to turn the little girl's room in to a shrine or something. Then they hear about this little boy, and it's like their little girl never existed.
In short, the ending is unnecessarily tragic in the little girls death alone, more so when her death splits Dunne and Grant apart, and ruined both by the fact that the couples problems are not fixed at the end of the movie, just papered over, and the treatment of a loss of a child as something a kin to the loss of a goldfish. Oh you lost your child? that's sad, but not a real problem. Just never you mind that and buck-up mom and dad, here's another. It is as though the movie is almost a warning to parents, enjoy them now because the little ones you love maybe taken from you at any moment, except, just kidding, that does not really matter because you can always have another and poof your grief will be gone.
Basically, if you stop the movie at the Christmas when the girl is six, it is not bad, it's a cute film, though not worth its rave reviews. The last twenty minutes or so ruin it, turning a tolerable film in to something that I just can't take.