Rating: 
Summary: Pay No Attention to the One Star Voters
Review: Just want to add my 2 cents worth. There is a reason this film won best picture. It WAS the best picture that year and one of the best for any year. The writing and direction is consistently inventive, clever, witty and intelligent. The massive old novel has been rendered down to its essence and filmed with wit and verve and played by a dream cast. The narration punctuates the humor and the depiction of 18th century England, both country life and London, is excellent. Tony Richardson and his cast had fun with the material, using every manner of technique (fast motion), asides to the audience, and so on to make a rollicking good modern comedy, that was much imitated (Woody Allen did the eating scene at least twice in his films). Comedy is definitely in the eye of the beholder, as witnessed by the negative reviews. All I can say is, they missed the point entirely. See Tom Jones and enjoy how much can be packed into a movie in under 2 hours.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Picture, Horrible Transfer
Review: Pay attention to this review if no other. `Tom Jones' is a terrific movie, in my humble opinion. But this DVD version is one of the worst transfers you'll ever find. It is missing at least three minutes of of footage from the original, including one key scene where Lady Bellingham encourages Lord Whoever to rape Sophie. In the original, the scene is cool, elegant, and evlil. It's missing here, maybe for politically correct reasons, and the edit chops with incredible crudeness directly from Lady Bellingham sipping tea to the lord to that gentleman unaccountably attacking Sophie. The result is that a lof of subsequent plot makes no sense at all. That alone would justify giving this one the miss, but the transfer is also hazy and unfocused, and may even have been made from a VHS tape. MGM Enterntainment is bringing out a new version on 6/19/2001. Wait for that if you have any sense.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Perhaps in 1968 there were fewer idiots in this world than in 2004? It's difficult to explain why this film has so many negative reviews. It is one of the best movies of the late 60s, and I have watched it so many times, nearly every scene has burned itself into my memory.
It is a perfect adaptation of Fielding's Tom Jones. Every minute of the film has so much joy, humor, excitement and hilarity that it's very difficult to sum up in this review.
If you have any taste in film at all, and are a patient and intelligent filmgoer, you'll want to buy this classic.
Rating:
Summary: Unabashed hilarity will ensue
Review: shortly after you pop this VHS into your esteemed slot. The ladies in the audience can indulge crushes on handsome, lovably fallible Tom; the gentlemen can develop soft spots for spunky and resourceful Sophie. The plot is twisted and hilarious, the music a perfect match, and its depiction of English life makes the French look like a bunch of uptight dullards. (The drumsticks scene is a classic, and the movie is worth watching for those two or so minutes alone.) I cannot recommend it too highly. It's brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: A stunning and for ever young movie!
Review: This film was a winner from its initial release . Sublime adaptation from Henry Fielding ' s novel , this story talks about the adventures of this man who loves the woman in superlative grade . Albert Finney made a role so credible loaded of charm and savoir vivre . His virtues are not exactly of the first order , but his defiant against the Status Q is told with nuance and very well gusto .
Tom Richardson made one of the top english movies in all the british cinema . An authentical ode to the joy . And Susan York is splendid too in this performance . Diane Cilento is simply amazing with her support role . Excelent transfer to DVD .
Please smile and let your senses talk by themselves .
Rating:
Summary: dumb, dumb, dumb...yet...PRETENTIOUS!
Review: This is a comic book version of a classic novel, presumably intended for those of us who want to show themselves conversant with the plot but who find holding up a reasonably thick volume with one or both hands too much of an intellectual exertion. Well, you can sit through the movie all right; you just won't be entertained. (It's all I can do to warn you.)
Rating:
Summary: A fun romp
Review: This is a very 1960s version of Henry Fielding's great novel... if you're looking for an authentic feel of 18th century social mores, don't look here. However, given that, it's actually a great translation of a very funny story... and the modernized humor reaches to 20th century audiences perhaps better than a literal reading of Fielding's teasing of then-current novel-fads. No swooning of knock-kneed lovers here, Albert Finney and Susannah York are as bright-eyed and spunky a romantic pair as any filmed. They are entirely believable as exactly the right adorable two to end up together after the hysterical tangle of Tom Jones' life is sorted out. A really fun movie and a very witty story. Read the book too!
Rating:
Summary: A New Sense of Modernism
Review: This is an adaptation of a large book, a Henry Fielding novel. In the early 1700's the growing middle class in Europe, especially in the British Empire, became literate. As an entertainment to get through the long hours of new leisure, novels flew from the printing presses. Tom Jones was a hit from the first. It was a bawdy tale with amusing detail. It is lucky that an experienced playwright like John Osborne was assigned the screenplay and double lucky that a fine director, Tony Richardson brought the tale to life.
Indeed, Richardson is a poet with the lush English countryside. Since much of the film depicts Tom Jones' amorous adventures in the grass with Molly Seagram, the peasant wench, on a skiff with the Squire's daughter, Sophie, in the tavern with his mother, er, not his mother, Mrs.Wilkens, and in the suites of a countess, the bawdy adventures spin by as food shoots from the mouths of lovers. There are also duels, a misunderstanding about the linage of the Jones baby, and an unwanted suitor for the lovely Sophie, Susan York.
I saw this film as a teen in 1963 and it telegraphed a new sense of modernism and sexual freedom without pretence that is ironic since Fielding's story was hundreds of years old on the eve of the Beatles and the swinging London of the 60's.
Rating: 
Summary: Of its Time
Review: This movie won best picture in 1963 over the likes of Cleopatra and Lillies of the Valley. I can say that it may be the oddest best picture of the 40 or so that I have seen. It has one amazing scene of a English Hunt filmed from all sorts of innovative angles for 1963. It is a truly amazing scene and I suspect this film could not have won best picture without it. It has the best editing and cinematography of the film. But the directing, which also won an academy award, reminds one of Monty Python and Benny Hill. If that's your cup a tea then you will probably like the movie. But I should note that much of the popularity of this film comes from the fact that it breaks new ground in both topic and film making. Remember, the best pictures before this were, Lawerence of Arabia (epic), West Side Story (musical), The Apartment (possible exception), Ben Hur, Gigi, The Bridge on the River Kwai, etc. With the possible exception of the sex oriented comedy The Apartment, film goers had never seen anything like Tom Jones in 1963. Of course we have since gotten more Wooddy Alen, Benny Hill and Monty Python than we can handle. Tom Jones may have been a thrill in 1963, but it almost seems a period piece out of the technicolor 60s than it does Henry Fieldings novel of the 18th century.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor quality DVD, Sound - so so very 60s movie
Review: This movie won best picture in 1963 over the likes of Cleopatra and Lillies of the Valley. I can say that it may be the oddest best picture of the 40 or so that I have seen. It has one amazing scene of a English Hunt filmed from all sorts of innovative angles for 1963. It is a truly amazing scene and I suspect this film could not have won best picture without it. It has the best editing and cinematography of the film. But the directing, which also won an academy award, reminds one of Monty Python and Benny Hill. If that's your cup a tea then you will probably like the movie. But I should note that much of the popularity of this film comes from the fact that it breaks new ground in both topic and film making. Remember, the best pictures before this were, Lawerence of Arabia (epic), West Side Story (musical), The Apartment (possible exception), Ben Hur, Gigi, The Bridge on the River Kwai, etc. With the possible exception of the sex oriented comedy The Apartment, film goers had never seen anything like Tom Jones in 1963. Of course we have since gotten more Wooddy Alen, Benny Hill and Monty Python than we can handle. Tom Jones may have been a thrill in 1963, but it almost seems a period piece out of the technicolor 60s than it does Henry Fieldings novel of the 18th century.
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