After having sat spell-bound through Victor Fleming's later adaptation of Kipling's Captains Courageous, I decided to give this a try. It's not as good, but still a pleasant movie.
The tie between the two, of course, is the relationship between a young boy who has not had a real father (in CC Harvey does technically have a father, but for all the attention Coyne pays him he might as well not have one) and a man who "adopts" him as a sort of son and whom the boy grows to idolize. The big difference, of course, is that while Manuel in CC is in fact one of the finest human beings one could hope to meet, someone with every quality that a boy should grow up idolizing, Long John Silver has virtually no good qualities. Jim Hawkins admires him for no good reason, since the officers on the ship all treat him well as well.
There are other differences as well. CC is not an adventure movie; TI most certainly is. In that respect, TI is not a great success. We watch the men on both sides get picked off one by one in a series of skirmishes, but there's not a lot of excitement involved.
Nor does Jim Hawkins really mature much, unlike Harvey Coyne. He is still blind to Long John's faults at the end, something of a dupe. Harvey Coyne goes from a spoiled child to a man in the course of the months he spends at sea on the We're Here, learning step by step, from example.
This is an enjoyable movie, but not an enthralling one. Victor Fleming did much better three years later with CC, which is really a remarkable, and very moving movie.
The tie between the two, of course, is the relationship between a young boy who has not had a real father (in CC Harvey does technically have a father, but for all the attention Coyne pays him he might as well not have one) and a man who "adopts" him as a sort of son and whom the boy grows to idolize. The big difference, of course, is that while Manuel in CC is in fact one of the finest human beings one could hope to meet, someone with every quality that a boy should grow up idolizing, Long John Silver has virtually no good qualities. Jim Hawkins admires him for no good reason, since the officers on the ship all treat him well as well.
There are other differences as well. CC is not an adventure movie; TI most certainly is. In that respect, TI is not a great success. We watch the men on both sides get picked off one by one in a series of skirmishes, but there's not a lot of excitement involved.
Nor does Jim Hawkins really mature much, unlike Harvey Coyne. He is still blind to Long John's faults at the end, something of a dupe. Harvey Coyne goes from a spoiled child to a man in the course of the months he spends at sea on the We're Here, learning step by step, from example.
This is an enjoyable movie, but not an enthralling one. Victor Fleming did much better three years later with CC, which is really a remarkable, and very moving movie.