Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

JohnHowardReid Copyright 7 August 1934 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. New York opening at the Capitol: 17 August 1934. U.K. release: 22 December 1934. Australian release: 19 December 1934. 11 reels. 109 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Young Jim Hawkins tackles vicious Long John Silver.VIEWERS' GUIDE: Suitable for all.COMMENT: Young Cooper is not an overly convincing Jim Hawkins, but everyone else is absolutely brilliant in this outstandingly entertaining version of the Stevenson novel we all studied so assiduously at school. Why didn't they lighten our little hearts by showing us this terrific movie, for heaven's sake? Just plain mean, I guess. No doubt to-day's students have merely to call up the movie on the Internet — making sure they specify this one and not the Robert Newton or Orson Welles interpretations. For fine as those actors are, they can't compare with Wallace Beery. In fact, Long John Silver was the role Beery was born to play. He is charmingly superb.But Beery's is not the only performance-of-a-lifetime in this masterfully directed account of a Boy's Own mutiny and piracy. Lionel Barrymore's is the other really stand-out piece of acting. And we should also make a special laudatory mention of both William V. Mong's Pew and Charles McNaughton's Black Spot.The rest of the players are no laggards either. What a cast! What a cast!Maybe Chic Sale is a bit too "in character" as Ben Gunn. But as 99% of "Treasure Island" viewers will never have seen the old Chic before (even though he made at least a dozen other pictures), this is a ridiculous quibble.At least director Victor Fleming is not an unknown quantity among school kids. Yes, this is just as good as Gone With The Wind or The Wizard of Oz or Captains Courageous or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In fact it's a darn sight better. Maybe I'm prejudiced because I'm a direct descendant of Robert Stevenson, Robert Louis Stevenson's grand- father, so bear that in mind! AVAILABLE on an excellent Warner DVD.

TheLittleSongbird Personal favourite goes to the Charlton Heston/Christian Bale version, but this 1934 film is very close behind(as blasphemous as this may sound I do prefer it over the Robert Newton film, although Newton is the better and perhaps definitive) Long John. This version is let down a little by an, for my tastes, overly-sentimental ending(though it is nowhere near as bad as the insulting ending of the bizarre-in-a-bad-way adaptation with Jack Palance) and Jackie Cooper's at times wooden and cloying Jim, though he does show believability in some of his scene with Beery. But it is wonderfully photographed and has great sets and costumes for the time, if the question of whether the film looks good by today's standards is asked the answer would be yes. The music score is rousing and fits the mood of the story and the film very well, not one of my favourites but all that matters is whether it's good and memorable and the score here is that. This adaptation of Treasure Island also has the wittiest and most quotable dialogue of any version, the dialogue too is also faithful to the style of writing of the book(which is a classic). The story may not be as dark, suspenseful and majestic as the book, but it's not devoid of those qualities. While the pacing creaks a little here and there, the film is always fun and maintains the sense of rollicking adventure, Jim and Long John's chemistry/relationship is vital and it is endearingly done here. In terms of how faithful it is, there are a few changes but it is relatively faithful to the story, the changes are written in well and don't feel bizarre or unnecessary, which was the biggest problem that the Jack Palance film suffered from. Treasure Island(1934) is not one of Victor Fleming's very best films, it's not among the best films ever made like The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind are, but it does rank high among his filmography and Fleming does a very good job directing, both technically and in his direction of the story and acting. The acting, with the exception of Cooper(who is not without his moments), is fine. Stealing the show is Wallace Beery who is perfectly-cast as Long John and does wonderfully showing the character's good and bad sides, usually I take or leave him as an actor but his performance here is one of his finest, a career-best perhaps. There is some great character actors involved and they don't disappoint, Lionel Barrymore plays Billy Bones with great menacing gusto, Nigel Bruce's blustering and bumbling fits Squire Trelawney like a glove and Charles "Chic" Sale is an amusing Ben Gunn. That the cast have good material to work from and don't suffer from distorted characterisation and story changes(unlike the Jack Palance version). All in all, very good as an adaptation and film in general of Treasure Island. 8/10 Bethany Cox

MartinHafer I noticed, like some of the other reviewers, that few in the film had the necessary British accents needed to play these characters well. However, despite this, the movie is an excellent version of the Stevenson novel--mostly due to good acting, great sets and the nice MGM polish you'd expect from one of their top productions.As far as the film goes, it's one of the earliest of the Wallace Beery films that teamed him with a cute kid--a formula that was repeated again and again up until Beery's death in 1949. Considering that according to his co-star, Jackie Cooper, Beery hated children and did little to hide it off camera--so I am sure in some ways Beery probably wished this and "The Champ" hadn't been so successful!! As for the story, it's the often told story of "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson. It's reasonably faithful to the story and is better than other versions I have seen. However, I have NOT seen the very famous Robert Newton version (by many seen as the best), so I cannot say the 1934 version was the best--though many of the newer versions tended to be a bit more dull. Like it or not, the Beery-Cooper schmaltz was entertaining--and I can see why audiences fell for it by the millions!By the way, like so many releases from Turner Entertainment, this film includes many wonderful extras from the same studio (MGM) from the same year as this feature's release. Turner also does this with many of their classic Warner Brothers releases as well--making them excellent values for customers.

Neil Doyle TREASURE ISLAND is the sort of film that cries out for Technicolor since it deals with pirates, treasure maps, ships at sea and a fort under attack--the sort of thing done in scores of other movies (and other versions of the story), but usually in color.Here the B&W photography is handsome enough, the sets look sturdy, the ship masts are full and the acting is strictly from the '30s era of overacting--not too much of a flaw in this case because the story cries for some good old melodramatic turns.During the opening sequences, LIONEL BARRYMORE acts up a storm as Billy Bones, the man who has the whole tavern singing "Sixteen Men On a Dead Man's Chest". His look of astonishment at seeing his assassin enter the tavern is priceless. Unfortunately, his role is a comparatively brief one.JACKIE COOPER resorts to too much pouting (in Shirley Temple style) to be truly effective as Jim Hawkins but does a decent enough job; WALLACE BEERY steals every scene he's in as the one-legged Long John Silver with a parrot on his shoulder; LEWIS STONE and NIGEL BRUCE do well enough in more conventional roles as high-blooded men from aristocracy; and even OTTO KRUGER, an actor I'm not particularly fond of, does one of his best jobs as Dr. Livesey, protector of the Hawkins boy, and DOUGLAS DUMBRILLE does a brilliant job as a master villain.Among the pirates, there's a good sense of adventure all the way through and the Robert Louis Stevenson story is faithfully rendered except for the sentimental ending. Nevertheless, it never quite overcomes the feeling that you're watching actors going through the motions of a pirate tale and lacks the lusty swordplay and swashbuckling fun of another sea epic, CAPTAIN BLOOD, which came out a year later. Michael Curtiz, it seems, had a better handle on this sort of adventure than Victor Fleming.