The Swiss Family Robinson (1960) – Movie Review

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Silver Stag Entertainment will be reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean March 16th. In order to prepare to re-watch it my wife and I are going to watch a bunch of old “Pirate” movies.

Arguably this movie isn’t about Pirates, and the original book didn’t have any Pirates in it, but it was a start and I hadn’t watched it in decades.

Characters

The characters were completely unlikeable. We have the super whiny youngest boy, the smart ass moping middle boy, the muscle bound lovable but dumb oldest, the overly stern father with a heart of gold, the useless mother, and the whiny useless flirty love interest.

The only likeable character was the Captain/Uncle who ends up saving the day.

Each character has their likable moments but overall I was almost cheering for the pirates

I won’t start ranting about how useless the women were in this movie. Let’s just say that they had less importance as characters and more importance as set pieces.

I give it 1 out of 5 for Characters

Story

The story was disjointed transitioning too quickly between scenes and taking too much time with parts of little importance.

The movie couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a family drama, survival movie, action adventure, or love story. Instead of integrating each style into the overall movie they wrote the scenes separately and sewed it together like some sort of Frankenstein’s monster.

If they had cut out the survival in the jungle scenes between the two boys and the girl it would have shaved 20 minutes off the movie and helped the flow.

I think the family scenes were heartwarming and make the movie.

I give it 2 out of 5 for Story

Sight and Sound

This was a beautiful movie, despite the low quality version we have, it’s filled with real jungle and real animals. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much a real tiger will add to a movie compared to a CGI recreation.

The soundtrack wasn’t memorable but it wasn’t bad either.

The screatching of the youngest was a little annoying though.

I give it 3 out of 5 for Sight and Sound

Fun

Most of the movie was cringe worthy but it did have enough scenes that were fun to watch that I didn’t hate every moment of my time.

I give it 3 out of 5 for Fun

Overall

It’s an uneven, chauvinistic, frustrating, but mildly entertaining movie. It’s a movie that is desperately in need for a remake.

If you don’t mind stupid characters and want to see a fun old style live action Disney movie this might be for you.

Final Score is 45%

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