Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn

While Tom Sawyer was a hymn to Boyhood per Mark Twaim Himself, this film extrapolates and lays bare the themes buried in both novels,Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn from the point if the protagonists were older teens and thereby appreciated more fully the folly and darkness of what they are going through.

Wish they hadn't so quickly glossed over Hucks story though. Gritty with the most honest portrayal of what life back then would have looked abd felt like. Strong character portrayal be all performers..particularly like Injun Joe..fleshed out into a 3 dimensional person fir first time. As a Twain scholar, I feel confident Sam Clemens would approve of this version. BIg goof though was that the body that was being robbed was that of Hoss Williams, not Ross Williams as now mistakenly in movie and even written on plank tombstone. Choice of European location to better reflect rural nature of town and more importantly, wide open Mississippi River of back than.was smart. Jim Hagerty.

Oh gosh, it can't get worse than that. I wanted to show this movie to my son after reading with him the book, it was supposed to be a treat for us. How disappointing, I can't express enough. Why are the boys played by grown up lads, whose eyes can't merely express a joy of 12/13 years olds? The Heg couldn't smile through the whole movie, was it painful for him to play in it? Such poor production, I am actually shocked. I went to google to see if anyone thinks the same or there's something wrong with me? How frustrating to pay money for watching that. Such primitive depiction of a wonderful world of Mark Twain.

Slow. Weak. Choppy. Terrible directing. My kids are forever going to hate Tom Sawyer as this was their first exposure. The characters are so boring! No fun. No fun at all...

The acting here is really awful and the cast is so bad I was expecting a white guy in black face to play Jim. This would have been a nightmare to work on, as the production quality is fair, but every day watching the daily's your face would hurt from "Face Palm". This movie should NOT have been made! Fern Champion & Marianne Stanicheva the people credited with casting, should NEVER work again!

The positives: 1. Another fine performance from the boy who plays in Super 8. 2. Great soundtrack. Really. It doesn't seem to fit this film. The negatives: 1. Poor screenplay. Dialogue tries to be faithful to time period but comes off very odd and wooden/ artificial. 2. Poor casting. Outside of the main character of Tom, every other actor seems destined to play in B movies. 3. Poor editing. No doubt due to (1) above, but the editing was choppy, in large part due to a choppy storyline / script. 4. Poorly synced voice overs (see #5). 5. Poor casting. The teacher has a jarringly odd, non-Midwestern accent (German?) which simply pulls the viewer out of the movie. Becky is a fine actress but is just not well cast to this Tom. The judge clearly never voices a single line; everything is (poorly) dubbed for this Bulgarian actor. 6. Dialogue tried to be faithful to the time period but failed. Toward the end, I believe Tom even says "fudge" for "fu--." Dialogue /scripting was just very artificial. 7. Storyline was methodical but never natural. Things "happened." But it never flowed. 8. Some scenes of the Mississippi were shot on 16 mm (or poorer quality film stock) and inserted into the movie, but they don't integrate well. 9. Narratives of Mark Twain (Val Kilmer) interrupt the story, and, while they introduce a novel concept to the storyline, simply feel odd/off to story progression. In short, this really felt like a C movie (not even a B movie) in caliber, due to uneven production value.