You won't be disappointed!

Amateur movie with Big budget

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is a very clever adaptation of James M. Barrie's four-act play. Some of the incidents that are only described on stage (Dow's being subdued on the minister's first day of preaching; the minister trying to put down a riot, and the gypsy girl trying to incite a riot) are brought dramatically and vividly to life, while many of the memorable incidents that we do see on stage are beautifully and movingly captured on film (e.g. Babbie's encounter with Micah Dow and her impersonation of "Mrs. Dishart"). On the other hand, the screenplay makes a great number of changes to the plot and the characters. This will doubtless upset some people, but I thought the changes were an improvement. Andy Clyde makes a delightful study of his provincial policeman. Hepburn gives a most engaging performance and her motives are less mischievously wanton than they are in the stage play. She is also superlatively photographed and attractively costumed. Aside from John Beal, who lacks Hepburn's magnetism and appeal, the support cast is excellent. Mary Gordon, for example, has a role right up her street. On the other hand, Richard Wallace's direction is a bit rough and ready, and the final scenes are paced too slowly, but in other respects, production values are first-class and the movie has a marvelous sense of place and period.

Spoilers. Observations. Opinions.March 16, 2017 update:I finally saw the rest of this film. Katharine Hepburn does not disappoint. She had two Scottish accents here; one for the gypsy and one for the cultured fiancé of Lord Rintoul.The minister actually looks taller than I imagined, and not so little. Maybe he was less rotund than the other men.I also enjoyed the later film made with Beryl Mercer: The Little Princess, with Shirley Temple. Beryl portrays that regal Queen Victoria, who helps Shirley in the quest for her missing father.I do like Kate's earlier films such as this one, which exist in the time period known as her box office poison era. In these, she is young, carefree and there is no Spencer Tracy around. My 2009 review:Sweet movie. I first heard of it while studying the life of Maude Adams, famous Broadway actress who played the lead (Lady Babbie) around 1897, to great success. Katharine Hepburn so clever in this movie -- so beguiling as the gypsy girl who constantly torments the minister with her tempting smile and flirtatious ways. Hepburn is very young here, and so fleetly flitting through the scenes.Gavin Dishart is so devoted to his mother, and she to him, that he can scarcely tear himself away to the cultivation of an adult romance. The mother thinks that the world revolves around her son. She gets to live in the manse (parsonage) with him, but all is overturned when the church elders find out that Gavin has been cavorting with the devilish gypsy girl. Mrs. Dishart knows that she and her son will be turned out of the house when all of this comes to a head.I haven't yet been able to see all of this movie. I thought there was a part where in reality Lady Babbie is the daughter of a wealthy, titled family, and that the gypsy outfit was just a disguise getup. Apparently Lady Babbie had lots of free time to join a countryside political group, disguising herself as a commoner and meanwhile attracting the attention of the naive young minister.I thought that Wearyworld was a very interesting personage. Everything he said is still very unique, profound and even humorous/funny. I like to see this movie just to listen to him talk and complain.

Which may sound strange coming from someone whose favorite film is Local Hero, but the longer this slight, overly delicate movie ran the more irritated I became with it. I appreciated the care with which it was mounted, but the story is far, far too thin to justify its nearly two hour running time. The final 30 minutes or so reminded me of the similarly unendurable A.I., the way it bludgeons you with its sickening sentimentality and needlessly draws out every scene, DEMANDING that you feel something, ANYTHING, PLEASE! The only thing I felt was nauseous. There isn't enough going on here to sustain interest. The movie might have been a mild success at 70 minutes, at over 100 it wears you down.The fundamental flaw at the heart of this film is the notion that the entire town would be completely devastated at the knowledge that their new minister would have interest in the opposite sex. It isn't as if he's a Catholic priest, there's no rule forbidding him to get married. Why the town drunk would be practically suicidal at the rumors that the minister is seeing someone (and the fact she's apparently a lowly gypsy is never made much of) is never made at all clear. When his pitiful son tearfully explains that his dad is "over-fond of the minister," I really started to squirm. What exactly is this film suggesting and why are nearly all the other women in this town invisible besides Hepburn's Babbie? In any event, it is impossible to expect modern audiences to relate to a movie with such an alien plot device. It simply doesn't come off, and if the town drunk is so heartbroken over all of this, what exactly occurs in the final act that suddenly makes the minister's relationship with Hepburn okay? And if you want to see an example of weak writing and storytelling, pay attention to the whole underdeveloped subplot concerning Babbie's aristocratic suitor, the one who plans to marry her "in a fortnight." Babbie airily points out a couple times that he "doesn't really love him," so it would be no big deal if she broke off their engagement. Really? Well, why are we supposed to believe that? Could it be because the man gets virtually no screen time and is stiffly portrayed by a forgettable actor? This is most certainly NOT the stuff of which classics are made. You see, there's never any contest between this man and John Beal's minister. And therefore, no drama. If you want me to believe that Beal and Hepburn are meant for each other then, as a filmmaker, you have to come up with much more compelling reasons why they are being kept apart. If you're a fan of Hepburn or Barrie or even John Beal, you may be willing to forgive The Little Minister its many flaws, but if you're none of the above, you've been warned. This is the sort of old movie that scares people away from old movies. It wasn't much good then and it's even worse now.

Its tender sentimentality is out of fashion today, of course, and has been for decades. But that's the point -- and that, for me, is the beauty of this film: it's positively luminous with an innocence and understated nobility that put our postmodern "edginess" to shame. I have to wonder if we've lost the capacity to experience and appreciate such rarefied sweetness of feeling. A sadly neglected film, with one of Katharine Hepburn's incomparable early performances -- radiant, charmingly quirky, and more emotionally expressive than a dozen Garbos. Sad, too, that co-star Robert Beal never crashed into the upper ranks of stardom; I saw tremendous potential in that performance.