TREASURE ISLAND (1950) *** Back before Robert Stevenson demonstrated that the most important element of a children's film is aesthetic magic...even back then Disney was better than everyone else at making movies for children. Actually, no one else was bothering all that much probably, allowance inflation hadn't really caught on or something. Anyway, they did it the old fashioned way, with good time-proven plots, fine actors, professional production. Back before Robert Stevenson trumped all that with magic, one of the best one's was this Robert Louis Stevenson tale and heaven only knows what Robert Stevenson would have done with Robert Louis Stevenson's tale! That felt like a long way... Anyway, having read both the book and the Classic comic book version, I feel perfectly qualified to declare this a most excellent rendering of the story. It looks and feels right, the pacing is perfection itself, and the actors all do fine jobs, respectively and respectably. Robert Newton is so gloriously over the top with his pirate shtick that it threatens the balance of the entire otherwise sensible film, but so great at it that things are only elevated to a level that almost implies Robert Stevenson more than Robert Louis Stevenson. I'm sure that heaven is still all abuzz at Newton's response to what Johnny Depp did by twinning his character with Keith Richards and a sartorial dash of Steven Tyler in Pirates of the Caribbean . I'll bet he was all blustery, threw in some blubbery dangling participles, and happy as an octopus at a leg-warmer convention. It's a classic movie version of a classic literary tale, there's never been enough of that around.
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