GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

harryundheide If anyone knows of another movie he is in that takes place during Christmas please post that info. Good scenery, fight scenes, etc.

sol- Hoping to inherent a substantial fortune by proving that her estranged father is a man of ill repute, a Boston woman travels to the tropical island where her father has long resided in this late career John Ford comedy. Elizabeth Allen is well cast as the prudish woman in question who gradually softens during the course of the film, but top billing here goes to John Wayne and Lee Marvin, cast as her father's friends. Wayne in fact has the most screen time as he takes to covering up the fact that Allen's father married a local woman - and had three non-Caucasian children - by pretending that the kids are his own. The comedic potential of this angle is never quite maximised though as Ford instead tries to derive humour from friendly fistfights and physical comedy (a man crashing through a concert piano). Wayne's formulaic romancing of Allen is not especially funny either, but then again comedy was never Ford's strongest suit. The film is more worthwhile than it may sound though. The snapshot of island life is fairly alluring with many races living there in peace and harmony. The locations are quite spectacular too and one gets a sense that the characters living there are quite rich in other ways, even if they do not have a fortune to inherit. The film has a very good supporting cast too, though most do not have a lot to do. Caesar Romero is perfectly smarmy, Jack Warden is solid as Allen's father and Jacqueline Malouf is great as Warden's eldest daughter who has to contend with the emotional toll of meeting her half-sister for the first time and pretending to be someone else.

SimonJack "Donovan's Reef" is one of the films I missed in the theater while I was serving in the Army in Germany. I didn't see it for many years – then, probably as a late night TV film. Today it's a film in my collection to play when family, friends, or I just want to relax with some good old-fashioned entertainment. Besides the last pairing of John Ford and John Wayne, this was near to the last movie that Ford made. The plot is a good one, and somewhat unusual. The characters are great, and the actors are just right for each role. The Duke was 56 years old when he made this film, but his Guns Donovan character doesn't seem to be much older than the 39-year-old Lee Marvin, as Gilhooley. All the cast are very good in this film. Cesar Romero is very funny as the Marquis Andre de Lage, the governor of the island. French actor Marcel Dalio is a hoot as Father Cluzeot. The setting on a South Pacific isle somewhere (filmed in Hawaii) is perfect. And the story is very good, and plausible. It reminded me just a tad of the musical "South Pacific," for the Americans and Europeans being on Polynesian islands. The story is a little serious but mostly funny and a lot of fun. I can imagine that the cast thoroughly enjoyed making this film. It's a very good, entertaining, adventure and comedy romance that the whole family should enjoy.

kyrat Having just been to Hawai'i, I decided to watch movies filmed in Hawai'i. Even better (I thought) were that the films attempt to address racism and mixed race children. By was I wrong. In both cases I got a severely dated film that seems racist in it's attempt to counter racism. Last week was South Pacific= Woman learns to love "half breed" children & ends up with old guy. Donovan's Reef=YOUNG woman comes to meet her father, learns to care for her "half caste" siblings. And falls (for NO discernible reason) for her father's OLD friend. Lots of ethnic stereotypes. Lots of TOTALLY RANDOM fight scenes. Some discussions of god, random Christmas mass thrown in. Lovely views of Kauai, the Waimea canyon save about 10 minutes of it, but over all not worth watching.