Touches You

Please don't spend money on this.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Cmon, this film is a holiday favorite. A local TV station would show it every Thanksgiving. I even saw it in the theatre when it came out. It's a simplistic film for children. Perhaps you're not getting that fact.For it's time....it was done very well. This was before FINDING NEMO, RATATOUILLE, and TOY STORY. Remember, in 1966, there were no computer generated images to dazzle. It was all done one frame at a time. We're not talking Spielberg here. You have to give credit to the crew members. In the day...this was state of the art.OK, so it's not to everyone's taste, I understand. But to this child, it will always bring back wonderful memories of turkey, a lit fireplace, adults at the dining room table, and us kids glued to the TV screen watching Hans Christian Anderson come to life. When this was played we knew Christmas wasn't far behind.This movie is truly an ensemble piece. Most of the stars are dead. At least we have the DVD to see the great performances. They really were great. This is a true classic!

Despite a terrific "Emperor's New Clothes" episode, I'm hard-pressed to recall anything in "The Daydreamer" which really works, and that's a shame because the team of Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass are obviously working with love and sincerity. Plot concerns a young Hans Christian Andersen who runs away from home and meets up with all the fairy tale characters he'll someday write about. Live-action prologue and epilogue are cringingly awkward, animated middle not nearly as bad but certainly not magical. Top vocal talents abound, however they're weakly used (Hayley Mills voices the Little Mermaid, yet when it's Hayley's turn to sing, we are instead treated to some kiddie variation on Marni Nixon). "New Clothes" segment is funny and better paced than the rest of the film, and is certainly helped by Ed Wynn as the delightfully egomaniacal Emperor. ** from ****

This Rankin/Bass production is quite a trip, and not the most lucid one, at that. Embarrassing cameos from a variety of stars, with "animation" well below par, considering their wonderful "Rudolph" specials. The story appears thrown together, connecting famous Anderson tales with an incoherent story line. How they managed to wrangle so many well-known voice-overs, I'll never understand. I grew up with Rankin/Bass, but did not see this film as a child. The DVD does make for a great conversation piece at parties, so I'd recommend the purchase. Perhaps, if they'd avoided the live-action segments, this film would have been a bit more enjoyable. The whole Ray-Bolger-running-around-with-pies is bizarre. Margaret Hamilton is wasted with about three lines. My 5 and 7 year-old nephews found it disturbing..."what about the 'cold tears from his hair'???"

I loved watching this whenever it came on when I was a kid. I loved how they took a young Hans Christian Anderson and put him in the middle of the stories that would later bring him fame. The thing that I think was a great moral to this story was that it is better to stay and face your problems than it is to run away. Too bad it is not shown on broadcast television anymore for the few people who don't have cable or sattelite.