Tom Sawyer (2000) - Really bland, but mostly harmless

 

I have said before that there is a hierarchy to movie releases, that you have movies released in theatres, then major streaming releases, followed by minor streaming releases, then Direct-to-Video releases, Television movies and finally movies released onto YouTube. I suggest this hierarchy as like, levels of ignorable for critics and audiences really, not necessarily about quality or how respectable they are, lots of direct-to-video releases exist, and just by sheer volume some of them are going to be good. This is really how I observe the kinds of movies other critics talk about, that they tend to focus on movies that were given theatrical releases, or movies on streaming when they have a ton of buzz about them. I feel like I was one of the only critics who tried to watch the Larva Island Movie when it was released onto Netflix, but I know I'm not the only one who watched movies like Duck Duck Goose or Next Gen. It makes me wonder why some movies just don't get much attention, do we just have a stigma about smaller movie releases? So, I'm going to take this time to take a look at a smaller scale release, the 2000 direct-to-video Tom Sawyer movie by MGM.

The story is an adaptation of the classic Mark Twain novel. I only vaguely know of the book in the sense that it is a pop culture icon, so whether or not it is a good adaptation, I can't say. Tom Sawyer is a rambunctious young man who becomes smitten with a young girl named Becky. Also, he and his friend Huckleberry Finn are looking for buried treasure, while a criminal by name of Injurin' Joe (Nice save there guys), is also looking for said treasure, murdering a man and framing another in the process. It's mostly the scenes with Joe that I find the most interesting, because they get fairly dark and intense, but most of the first act is spent with Tom cooing over Becky, and chunks of the rest of the movie are spent with Tom's Aunt and brother, and his friends, and frankly, I just don't find any of them interesting characters. Even the scenes with Joe, they do go somewhat dark, showing him actually kill a man, but it's a tame killing (Ain't that an oxymoron), the man gets thrown into a gravestone and we don't get to see the impact, we don't even get a dark joke that he was thrown into the grave he was just mourning at. It's scenes like this that make me want to respect the movie, because it's clear they did want to tell a respectful version of the story, but the rest of it... eh.

I think a lot of that is down to the characters, because I just don't find them that interesting. Tom is Bart Simpson, he is rambunctious and trouble-making, but ultimately a decent kid beneath it all. Huckleberry Finn is sort of the idiot best friend character, Becky is the southern lady, but is also that "non-girl" girl, she's into arm wrestling and adventure, and I've seen every single one of these character types before. Honestly, Joe isn't even that interesting, he's just your standard snarling crook, and I swear any character like Tom's brother is immediately a character I will despise. I feel like a lot of this isn't really the movie's fault, Tom Sawyer was published in 1876, about one-hundred and thirteen years before The Simpsons aired their premier episode in 1989, but the trope is called "Seinfeld is unfunny" for a reason. I've seen these characters before, and this movie does not really do much different with these tropes. At least the voice acting was alright, but as much as I love Betty White and Kevin Michael Richardson, these weren't the best roles for them.

Frankly, the animation is not much better. Full disclosure, I found an uploaded version of this movie on YouTube, so the visual quality was not gonna be the highest, pro tip for anyone getting into media review, ease of access and quality tend not to go hand in hand. Regardless, the animation was... okay. Frankly, there is not a lot to comment about it, the animation is serviceable, it's... it's mid, the animation is mid. The whole movie is completely, absolutely, agonizingly mid! The characters? Mid! The story? Mid! The animation? Mid! They should have called this movie "Mid Sawyer", it's so mid I wouldn't be shocked if this was actually Illumination's first feature, everything about it is mid. The music especially, I skipped through a lot of the songs, but the opening song was repetitive, and it cut out for a brief moment to some Arabian Music, because it was for a dream sequence and that is what Tom was dreaming at the moment, I hated it when it happened in the Pink Elephants song in Dumbo, I hate it now. I'm not even really a big country music fan, actually no, I'm not a big fan of post fifties country music from male singers, and the main characters are voiced by country stars. This review was really tough to write, because what can I say about a movie that is absolutely mid?

Okay, well there is one thing I can really talk about; Is this movie a good introduction to the classic Americana story? To answer this question, I have to ask myself if I would have liked this movie as a kid, and I have to say... maybe? I can easily imagine myself fast forwarding through several of the scenes to get to parts that would have interested me a lot more. I can't say it's made me more interested in the book, but it hasn't made me any less interested either. It's harmless, just really bland. If this is something you think your kid might be into, it's better than crap like Duck Duck Goose, but as for watching it on your own, meh, I don't think I can really recommend it all that much. At the same time though, it's not really a movie I recommend avoiding on any level, it's just a movie that I feel only really gets watched by people babysitting kids. So, I don't recommend it, but if it's available to watch somewhere, I can think of worse movies. I can also think of much more interesting ones, and frankly, I need something much more interesting to review next.