Tom Sawyer

Rating:
Summary: Excellent movie/cartoon for family
Review: This is a terrific movie/cartoon that the whole family can watch. Rhett Akins and LeeAnn Womack are great. It has a wonderful soundtrack for adults and children alike. The music sends a good message as well as the story being a Mark Twain Classic.

Rating:
Summary: Cool in a world of insanity
Review: This movie (Based on the book by Mark Twain) was Excellent becuse of it's great animation and Portrayals of the classic characters from the twain classic

Rating:
Summary: Tom Sawyer is Great!
Review: This movie is wonderful! I cannot believe that you can buy it new for as little as $4! It is full of great music, action packed animation and it just totally rocks.

Rating:
Summary: it has an all animal cast
Review: Tom Sewyar was never better then in this fully anamated spectacular that follows the adventures of Tom Sewyar [a cat],Rebel [a frog],and Huck Finn [a fox]. Tom falls for Becky Thacher[a cat]who just moved there,which makes his old girl friend Amy Lawrence[a cat]jelouse because she still loves him,but much later Amy falls for Huck.also listen for the all country music sound track.

Rating:
Summary: Highest Ranks in one area, Lowest in all others.
Review: When viewing this movie, you can easily see the brilliant talents of the animators that worked on it. They shine. The character animation, backgrounds, color work -- they're all exquisite. The characters are wonderfully illustrated, and very realistic. Had MGM decided to make Mark Twain's TOM SAWYER with these characters in a -serious- venue, they might have had a wonderful, big hit, maybe even bigger than the LION KING, if they promoted it properly.

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. The whole thing has been rewritten, with only a loose nod towards the original plot, as if it were -designed- to be a failure, a knock-off direct-to-video production.

I would -NOT- have liked to be a character animator on this movie. Mixed in with the jumbled plot and semi-familiar characters are overlong, unrelated, distracting (and stupid) dream sequences with distorted characters, dance/music scenes and other bits of childish, pointless nonsense, which brings the designated target audience of this movie down to the 4-6 age range, in my opinion.

As an animator myself, I know that it's hard to breathe life into something that's being designed by committee (especially one that knows nothing about animation, and tries to ape Disney with it's "sticking-in" of dance/musical scenes and shifting of names/topics from what they were in the book itself to more politically-correct versions (such as "Injun' Joe" becoming "Injurin' Joe") and produce quality work for something that is obviously being destroyed by stupid add-ons and massive deviations from what was originally an enthralling story all on its own.

Yet I have to give it to them -- these animators did -not- shirk in the least little way; they put forth a -stellar- performance, and it only hurts the more to see their wonderful work and characters directed down such pathetic scripting and storyboard channels. Almost all serious moments are glossed over and/or changed to be light-hearted or silly/stupid, even the pivotal moment in the book where Tom steals a kiss from Becky getting turned into an out-of-the-blue chase/music/too-quick pointless action scene. Even the dance/fight/escape choreography is almost always wacky, silly, pointless or stupid. Furthermore, the sound editing is atrocious, with significant volume mixing changes between characters that are on screen (too soft) and off screen (too loud).

What this animated movie needed, before it was ever produced, was a competent Animation Director with total scripting and content authority, and a determination to make TOM SAWYER into a movie for kids and adults of all ages, even as it is a book for all ages today. Unfortunately, MGM chose otherwise, and they got the expected result -- this piece of saddening dreck.

If you love character animation, I recommend this movie -- which is why I gave it one star. It's worth the price for the art alone. But I wouldn't recommend it for any other part of it, from story to music. Definitely a "thumbs down" overall... and it -pains- me to do that to the work that these animators obviously put so much effort into.

Rating:
Summary: Highest Ranks in one area, Lowest in all others.
Review: When viewing this movie, you can easily see the brilliant talents of the animators that worked on it. They shine. The character animation, backgrounds, color work -- they're all exquisite. The characters are wonderfully illustrated, and very realistic. Had MGM decided to make Mark Twain's TOM SAWYER with these characters in a -serious- venue, they might have had a wonderful, big hit, maybe even bigger than the LION KING, if they promoted it properly.

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. The whole thing has been rewritten, with only a loose nod towards the original plot, as if it were -designed- to be a failure, a knock-off direct-to-video production.

I would -NOT- have liked to be a character animator on this movie. Mixed in with the jumbled plot and semi-familiar characters are overlong, unrelated, distracting (and stupid) dream sequences with distorted characters, dance/music scenes and other bits of childish, pointless nonsense, which brings the designated target audience of this movie down to the 4-6 age range, in my opinion.

As an animator myself, I know that it's hard to breathe life into something that's being designed by committee (especially one that knows nothing about animation, and tries to ape Disney with it's "sticking-in" of dance/musical scenes and shifting of names/topics from what they were in the book itself to more politically-correct versions (such as "Injun' Joe" becoming "Injurin' Joe") and produce quality work for something that is obviously being destroyed by stupid add-ons and massive deviations from what was originally an enthralling story all on its own.

Yet I have to give it to them -- these animators did -not- shirk in the least little way; they put forth a -stellar- performance, and it only hurts the more to see their wonderful work and characters directed down such pathetic scripting and storyboard channels. Almost all serious moments are glossed over and/or changed to be light-hearted or silly/stupid, even the pivotal moment in the book where Tom steals a kiss from Becky getting turned into an out-of-the-blue chase/music/too-quick pointless action scene. Even the dance/fight/escape choreography is almost always wacky, silly, pointless or stupid. Furthermore, the sound editing is atrocious, with significant volume mixing changes between characters that are on screen (too soft) and off screen (too loud).

What this animated movie needed, before it was ever produced, was a competent Animation Director with total scripting and content authority, and a determination to make TOM SAWYER into a movie for kids and adults of all ages, even as it is a book for all ages today. Unfortunately, MGM chose otherwise, and they got the expected result -- this piece of saddening dreck.

If you love character animation, I recommend this movie -- which is why I gave it one star. It's worth the price for the art alone. But I wouldn't recommend it for any other part of it, from story to music. Definitely a "thumbs down" overall... and it -pains- me to do that to the work that these animators obviously put so much effort into.