Still the Beaver

This was simply awful. Jerry Mathers is a chumpy twit as the "grown" Beaver who still wears his goofy baseball cap and windbreaker coat despite being well into his 30's. He trudges home glumly to his mommy after losing his job and wife, and the cute Beaver we all remember is brought back to life. He hasn't changed a bit--all the dopey mannerisms are still in effect, and big brother Wally still has the upper hand in intelligence, strength, and female magnetism. Director Steven Stern seems to have forgotten that in the final seasons of the old Leave it to Beaver series, Beaver had grown up quite a bit and was well past the bumbling twirp we recall from the early days. I was looking forward to seeing the adult Beaver in some adult situations with some casual references to the past. Instead, the producers try to cash-in by heaping on the corny treacle with all the characters being much older yet none wiser.

It was a pleasure for me to see this movie when it was first released. Unfortunately, I did not get my first VCR until 1984, so I was not able to tape it.

While I believe that the movie was a wholesome update, I feel that the absence of Hugh Beaumont (who passed away a year earlier) detracts from the 'luster' of the movie somewhat.

Nevertheless, Barbara Billingsley as the matriarch June Bronson Cleaver, does a good job of holding the family together.

Sorry, I don't agree that this one was a dud. The Beaver never grew up -why should we have expected him to? He was a whiny kid who grew up to be a whiny, clueless adult. I loved the first scene when his wife turns the sprinklers on him and later, when June is sitting in the graveyard saying "Ward, I'm worried about the Beaver." Meeting Eddie Haskell's kid, who is his father all over again, of course, was also great fun.

Leave it to Beaver was never fine theater or great writing,it was just a look at the way America never really was.

I am not a fan of "reunion" shows, in general. They always fall short and disappoint.

This one is not the greatest TV movie of all time by any means, but as an "update" or "reunion", it's decent. At least the main characters (Beaver, Wally, Eddie, et. Al) were middle-aged as opposed to the usual seniors-trying-to-recreate-30-again of most of these types of shows (Return to Mayberry being a glaring example). These characters now had kids and faced the problems their parents had faced 20 years earlier. Maybe because of that, the show worked reasonably well. I enjoyed it.

Growing up in the early sixties, I always believed that the Cleavers were just like my family. Ward was like my dad in many ways, June was like mom, and Wally was like my older brother. The mannerisms, attitudes, clothes and even the hairstyles were all too similar.

Forty years later, the similarities and relevance remains strong. Since my dad passed, mom has become the matriarch of the family, just as June has become the matriarch of the Cleavers. What's more relevant than Ward Cleaver passing away, as my dad did, leaving a legacy, affecting the hearts and minds of his wife and kids?

I believe there is something seriously twisted about an individual who can knock this 1983 pilot of "Still The Beaver". There is so much garbage on TV and in the movies that is much better off not paying any attention to. There is truly something creepy about some of the post on this thread knocking the black and white episodes or the 1983 movie memorializing Hugh Beaumont.

Perhaps these people would prefer dorks like Cedric "The Entertainer" and Martin Lawrence playing Wally and The Beaver!