Le Prince et le Souffre douleur

This adaptation of the popular children's book, The Whipping Boy, succeeds very well!

I enjoyed the entire movie from beginning to end - it stays very close to the story, with an extra element or two added in. These do not divert from the original story but simply add to it.

The story is well-acted and authentic, the villains and the children are good fun. If you like a light but moving story, this is the movie for you!

A special note is that Max Brindle, credited for writing the screenplay, is actually a pseudonym for Sid Fleischman, author of The Whipping Boy. (See The Abracadabra Kid, Sid Fleischman's autobiography.)

Enjoy the movie! Although it was made for television, you can find it on video.

Barbaric times humans lived in during feudalism. It is a good thing for children to learn about these times, but not when there is a Pollyanna style to telling stories of this time. So much hardship was experienced by the poor during while the royalty & other elites lived with unbelievable privilege. The film manages to show the pauper children as actually being far more functional than the royals, but the concluding aspect of the story has everything all happy & dandy by the King & prince incorporating the poor children, while of course the majority of the poor continue to live in poverty & squalor. The film needs to tell the truth, not sugar coat. Children are smarter than that.

In Europe at a time when men of the aristocracy wear powdered wigs and Leonardo da Vinci has figured out man can fly, Jemmy lives on the street with his sister Molly. He makes a living by catching rats and selling them to Blind George, who can see out of one eye. Horace is a prince and heir to the throne, and he apparently does not have to live by any rules. Because he is bored and he believes his parents ignore him, he goes through the town creating havoc and never gets punished.

Well, that's not entirely true. If his parents believe Horace needs to be punished, a 'Whipping Boy' will take the spankings. Jemmy is chosen for that duty. Meanwhile, his sister is put in a sort of prison and Jemmy wants to get her out.

Despite the fact that he is to take over the throne someday, Horace refuses to learn anything from his tutor, who discovers that Jemmy is more educated than the prince and also eager to learn more. When Jemmy's mother was still alive, she valued education.

Because they are both unhappy, Jemmy and Horace eventually run away and have a series of adventures. Meanwhile, there is a dispute between the kingdom where Horace lives and a neighboring country, and the boys' disappearance doesn't help matters.

Cutwater and Hold-Your-Nose-Billy are among the funnier villains in this movie. There is also a dancing bear named Petunia, who is cared for by a gypsy girl named Betsy who becomes the boys' friend.

This is a funny family movie with good performances by many of the leading actors, especially the adults. There is little here to concern parents. Cutwater and Billy are a little scary but not really anything to be worried about. If you don't like 'Fear Factor', you may be bothered by some scenes with rats.

Overall, this was a fun adventure.

"The Whipping Boy" is a movie made for the Disney Channel and is based on a popular children's book of the same title. I mostly saw it because I've been trying to watch as many of George C. Scott's films as I can find...though, as it turns out, he plays only a relatively minor character.

Based on the costumes, the story appears to be set in the fictional country of Bratenberg at about 1800 (give or take a week). The story begins with two very poor orphans scraping to get by. However, when the odious young Prince sees them, he decides to have the boy taken prisoner and made his new whipping boy. Now, I have no idea if a 'whipping boy' is a real thing or something made up by authors. Regardless, the whipping boy's job is to be beaten instead of the Prince every time the Prince is bad...and this horrid monster is VERY bad and the whipping boy pays the price.

After various shenanigans, the whipping boy decides to run away...and the Prince follows him because the King is so angry at the Prince he's planning on actually whipping the horrid Prince instead of his proxy. Soon the pair are kidnapped and are going to be held for ransom. Can they manage to escape? And, will the Prince remain a horrid monster for the rest of his wretched life? And what about the whipping boy's sister...what happened to her in all this?

This story clearly is focused on entertaining kids, though it is still enjoyable for adults...so if your kids sucker you into watching it with them, then it won't be so bad! The story is interesting and the acting generally good. Plus the location shooting is actually very nice and the film has a few decent object lessons for kids. However, I wouldn't show it to really young kids...a few scenes might be too intense for the 5 and under crowd.

I caught a bit of this made-for-TV adaptation of "The Whipping Boy", the children's novel by Sid Fleischman, perhaps when it first aired. Later, while I was still in elementary school, and studying the Middle Ages for a while, I was assigned to read and study the book. Eventually, a day came when we all had to come to school dressed as medieval figures (I dressed as a king), and that day, we were shown this made-for-TV movie, so that was when I got to see the entire thing. Over eleven years later, I've finally seen it again, which I certainly don't regret.

Prince Horace is a spoiled, mischievous young prince who loves to cause trouble and pull pranks, and is very unpunctual. Jemmy and Annyrose are two poor, orphaned siblings who catch rats. Not long after a confrontation between the prince and the two siblings, Jemmy is captured one day while his sister is not in sight, and taken to the castle! Being heir to the throne, the prince cannot be spanked, and has a "whipping boy" to take beatings whenever the prince misbehaves! Jemmy has been chosen as Prince Horace's new whipping boy, so, now captive in the castle, he is the one who is punished for the spoiled prince's wrongdoings. Meanwhile, Annyrose has been wrongfully accused of theft, and has been sentenced to prison! One night, Jemmy and Prince Horace, who are both unhappy for different reasons, run away together, and are soon captured by two criminals known as Hold-Your-Nose Billy and Cutwater!

This adaptation of the book obviously isn't exactly the same, but from what I remember about the popular children's novel, this 1995 made-for-TV movie follows it quite well, with the mischievous Prince Horace and his "whipping boy", Jemmy, on an adventure where the prince has some valuable lessons to learn. I'm not sure how much I liked this TV version of "The Whipping Boy" the first time, but watching it again after all these years was an intriguing experience for the most part. It's a family adventure film with some rather moving, serious parts, as well as some humour. The story also has a good moral about child neglect, which Prince Horace is a victim of, and as for the "whipping boy" aspect, that was one of the things I learned about while studying the Middle Ages in elementary school all those years ago. Yes, the story is fictional, but misbehaving young princes really did have "whipping boys" to take their punishments for them centuries ago, as absurd as it may sound, which I remember was pointed out in a note on the last page of Fleischman's book!

Back when I first saw this movie, I didn't know it was a TV movie, not a theatrical one. I didn't know that until years later, when I looked the film up on IMDb, and that was also when I discovered that it apparently wasn't too widely recognized. After finally seeing it again, I would say it deserves more recognition, and would have worked on the silver screen. Unfortunately, this adaptation of Sid Fleischman's children's novel seems to be pretty rare now, but if you like family-friendly films that take place centuries ago, ones that both seriousness and humour, as well as morals, it could be worth searching for. It may not be the greatest film of its kind, but if you ask me, it certainly isn't strictly for kids, and could probably reach quite a wide audience if only more people heard of it.