Wonderful character development!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This outstanding movie from 1938 is still relevant and can stand as excellent entertainment for today' audiences. Great for young and old there are thrills and sadness combined with comedy and great characters. Not a point is missed in Norman Taurog's direction--he was a specialist with children--and the timing is superb. The newly restored color is excellent as is James Wong Howe's camera-work and William Cameron Menzies set designs. The children's acting is totally convincing and Tommy Kelley as Tom Sawyer is great. The film has probably once of the best ending tag lines of all movies. Once you see this movie you'll never forget it.

You folks from the Chicago area will remember Frazier Thomas and his 'Family Classic' television program that ran for years on Friday night on WGN. My favorites were 'Robin Hood' and 'Tom Sawyer' from 1938. The movie is moving event that will take you down Memory. First love, raw fear, shame, murder, fun and pure joy is present in this wonderful retelling of Mark Twain's American classic. The story is set on the mighty Mississippi River in Hannibal, Missouri, circa 1850. The young boy playing the lead role is a very pleasant young fellow with plenty of charm and mischief to entertain the entire family. I have seen this film numerous times and I still love it. You will too.

This review is of the full 91 minute version. There's another one out that's about 77 minutes.I haven't read "Tomy Sawyer" since I was a kid (I'm in my 40s now) but this movie bought back a lot of good memories! Tom Sawyer (Tommy Kelly) is being bought up by his Aunt Polly (May Robson) along with cousin Mary and the vicious Sid (David Holt). Tom is constantly getting into trouble with his buddy Huckleberry Finn (Jackie Moran). In the course of the movie Tom falls for cute Becky Thatcher (Ann Gillis), runs away from home, witnesses a murder and it ends with him and Becky being chased by the killer. OK--this is far from perfect. Kelly was an unknown--and it shows. He's not good at all. Also the film is episodic...but so was the novel. There's also a young black kid here who comes across as an idiot and is treated pretty badly. I realize that's a sign of its time but it's uncomfortable to watch now. Still this is worth catching.The color is beautiful and the film moves very quickly. Kelly aside all the acting is good (Robson does wonders with her stereotypical role) and I was never bored. The very last bit with Sid and Aunt Polly was just perfect! It also bought back the book to me--I was remembering entire sequences I haven't read since I was a kid. This is also perfect viewing for the entire family. Well-made and worth catching. Try catching the full version.

We complain that today's movie stars lack the charisma, the memorable faces and personalities of the stars of Hollywood's Golden Age. But one thing has gotten better over the years and that's child acting. Today's kids are remarkably natural and real compared with the awful, slow, sticky artificiality of most of the child actors of yesteryear.There are many wonderful things about this film. William Cameron Menzies' visualization of the graveyard and the caves, Jack Cosgrove's matte paintings (those skies!), James Wong Howe's cinematography are all first class and memorable. Some (but not all) of the adult actors are quite fine. But the labored hamminess of the kids is quite unendurable. The illusion of thought, the illusion that something is being said for the first time never surfaces here for a moment. All is wide-eyed, over-rehearsed, over-enunciated and torture to watch.Mark Twain's immortal story retains power and magic, and the cave sequence in particular will stay with you, but in spite of the child actors, not because of them.