The Animated Adventures of Tom Sawyer

A year ago, I was with a buddy browsing through the "Animated Films For Children" section of Netflix, to see what kind of trash we could get a good laugh at. We stumbled upon this film and thought the picture looked sort of anime-ish. We decided we'd check it out and were not prepared for what we got. My friend couldn't take much more of it beyond the first 3 minutes, so I ended up watching the rest by myself. My gosh. I don't have the right words to describe how hilariously bad this film is. The dialogue is trash, the story is all over the place and makes no sense, there's nothing remotely interesting or likable about any of the characters, and the animation is beyond wonky and jerky that I found myself laughing it more than the "comedy". And, despite both Tom and Finn being little kids, the character designs make them both look like teenagers (especially Finn). And the other characters' designs look really unappealing when you put them all side by side; some are very cartoon-ish looking, and some look more like comic-book/anime rip off spawns drawn by people who just wanted to go home that day. And the voice acting is... not great. It's not the worst, but it definitely isn't great.

The musical segments (yes, this film has musical segments, and LOTS of them) have possibly the most bland song writing I have ever heard. And everyone's singing voice is different from their normal voices. There are a lot of films that do this that aren't bad, but none of them ever sounded this jarring. Every song is complete nothingness, and all sound the same. The only thing that kept my attention in those segments were the terrible choreography and jerky animation, as well as how unfitting the music went with the scene it was placed in. For example, there is a funeral scene (it's not a real funeral, though, I'm not entirely sure what it is... hell I don't think even the movie knows what it is) in this film that has a musical segment and it is the second funniest scene in the entire film, only to be beaten out by the song that immediately (and I'm serious when I say 'immediately') follows.

There are also bizarre cut-away fantasy segments that do nothing but lengthen the film's run time. There are also countless moments, that I can't tell if it's the writer's, editor's, director's, or animator's fault, that make you question what's even going on. And I won't give away the ending, but just so you know, wow does it take a weird turn. I felt dumbfounded. It is such a bizarre way to end... anything. I haven't even scratched the surface of this mind-boggling film-trash. There is so much wrong that went into this film that it's remarkable. This is on the same level of The Room in terms of so being bad it's good. I highly recommend it to those who enjoy subjecting themselves to terrible films. Watch it with your buddies, share a few drinks, and have some laughs at something so incredibly dumb-founding that it's not worth subjecting to young, impressionable rugrats.

This cartoon was a bore. It didn't follow the "Tom Sawyer" book very well. The musical numbers were oddly placed, didn't make any sense, and lacked any entertainment value. There was no real storyline or plot to the whole movie, it was more like they took random pages out of Tom Sawyers diary. I had a real hard time caring about anything in this movie. I didn't care about any characters or even about the non existing story. I could only watch this movie in in like 10-15 minute intervals. It was a complete waste of time. It amazed me that this movie could pick up the name power that they got, with the voices of Kirsten Dunst and Christopher Lloyd.

Well, this is another one of those cheesy animated shows that America put out to get children to read. What do I think of it? It's as bad as all the other shows I reviewed like this. No offense to those that create stuff like this, its good for little kids that have no clue how good movies are made and have pretty much only watched the ones made for them. It's just not made for adults and those that actually know how things should be animated. The characters don't seem to have the charm of the characters in the book that they are trying to portray and feel like cardboard cut outs of generic ideas of the characters. I feel that Mark Twain would have not been proud of this attempt at his book.

The animation is actually alright… when we are watching the still images. When we actually had an animated character on the screen, the animation was really bad. Characters are disproportionate, the movements feel choppy sometimes, and I just don't understand what they tried to do. It just feels like they had a very low budget and didn't take their time to actually work on it.

WHY ARE THEY SINGING? STOP SINGING IN EVERY ANIMATED MOVIE! I hate when the characters just start singing out of the blue. And the songs that they sing just sound really bad or don't have a reason to even be sung. When they talk, it feels stale or like they are reading off the script rather then trying to put their heart into it. All in all, not a very good movie.

If you watch this cartoon for the purpose of seeing 'Tom Sawyer' represented on screen, you won't like it. It is not for analytical study; it is a children's cartoon, and for this purpose it serves admirably. It's a great movie to show young kids. It provides a good enough background of the story for it's title. It has a lot of catchy sing-songs which kids will enjoy. It also goes out of its way to be mild an non-offensive (the character 'Injun Joe' is here renamed 'Tatoo Joe'), which is fine for its target audience. Sometimes, it seems to make the issues too subdued for the complex work of Tom Sawyer. The issue of slavery is brought up occasionally, but then only awkwardly. The cast does a fine job, Ross Malinger and Ryan Slater in particular as Tom and Huck are great fun to (hear). Remember that a waxed-over version of a story, for children, can still be enjoyable.