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If you haven't seen the 1939 original with Bette Davis, this updated version of "Dark Victory" is a pretty good made-for-TV movie (I haven't seen it since the original TV showing in 1976, so I'm relying on my memory). Elizabeth Montgomery is always good, Anthony Hopkins did well in an early role, and the story will hold your interest.

However, if you have seen the original - forget this version (the same comment applies to the other remake of "Dark Victory" - the 1963 film "Stolen Hours" with Susan Hayward). Like most remakes, it doesn't compare to the "real thing". You can't improve upon a movie that was already perfect of its kind, and is an acknowledged classic of the cinema.

The first sound version of Mark Twain's immortal classic does capture the charm of the story (who wouldn't want to be a little boy in the summertime again?). As a film adaptation, it also remains pretty faithful to its original source, and contains many of the book's famous segments (whitewashng the fence, the midnight visit to the graveyard, lost in the cave, etc.).

This early "talkie" of "Tom Sawyer" does suffer, however, from the stodginess and "creakiness" that many of the early sound films exhibit, due to the (at that time) primitive sound recording techniques (the "marriage" of sound and picture still wasn't totally perfected in 1930, and a number of films that year were still being produced in both sound and silent versions). This "creakiness" does indeed have a charm of its own (at least to die-hard fans, such as myself, of classic films), but modern audiences will probably find this 1930 version too slow and stagey. (A 1938 technicolour remake by producer David O. Selznick, entitled "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", is really the definitive film version of this story).

A renowned child star, and later famous as "Uncle Fester" in the TV show "The Addams Family", Jackie Coogan performs well as Tom, but at 16 he was really too old for the role (Tom is supposed to be about 11 or 12; the 1938 version starred 12-year old Tommy Kelly, who was the perfect age). The remainder of the cast is also good (Jackie Searl in particular as Tom's obnoxious and detestable brother Sid), although like Coogan, similarly-aged Junior Durkin was also too old to play Huck Finn.

All in all, a charming "curio" for movie watchers, but won't endure as an acknowledged "classic".

The plot is really nothing more than boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, but it's enough of a framework to present an almost non-stop catalogue of great Irving Berlin songs. The music itself is all that is needed to make this a grand entertainment; the litany of classic Berlin standards includes the title song, "Now It Can Be Told", "Everybody's Doing It Now", "Easter Parade" and many others, performed by Twentieth-Century Fox's stock musical players Tyrone Power, Alice Faye and Don Ameche, as well as Jack Haley (who does a great comic rendition of "Oh How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning") and a young, vibrant Ethel Merman, singing, amongst others, "Blue Skies" and "My Walking Stick". All in all, a wonderful "escape" film.