Anne of Green Gables
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Movie Reviews of Anne of Green Gables
Movie Review: The Story is Timeless
Summary: 5 Stars
I remember watching the Anne of Green Gables series when it first showed on American TV, and fell in love with it. I purchased the VHS versions of this and the sequal and watched them over and over with my mother and my young niece. Three generations of women in my home enjoyed it trememdously. About 10 years ago I donated the VHS tapes to the library assuming I had seen it enough, but then decided recently to purchase the DVD. The quality is really no better than the quality of the VHS versions; however, you forget about it after the first few minutes.
The story of Anne is actually very feminist in nature. All the main characters are women, with the men being mere scenery. Even the character of Matthew, with his quiet nature, takes second place to that of Marilla's overbearing, take charge personality. Colleen Dewhurst and Richard Farnsworth are perfect in their roles and play magnificantly off Megan Follow's Anne.
If you've seen Anne several times the commentary adds a new element to the story. However, I would have liked more commentary on the actors and less on the lighting and scene design. It lags in many places where the director didn't seem to have anything to say, although it did answer a lot of questions I had about some of the scenes, like the one where Anne is running through the fall trees -- I always thought it didn't fit because she never wore a bright blue dress with a white apron. Now, I know the seasonal changes were shot the year prior to shooting the miniseries and edited in later. Some of the commentary left out things I would have liked to have known, such as the scene where Anne finds a mouse in the pudding. I want to know if they used a real mouse because it was so realistic looking, and if so, how did Megan react to having to scoop it out of the pudding. Well, instead the director focused on the color of her sweater and the spoon vs. the color of the red wood in the kitchen! He does express his utmost admiration for the actors in the series, especially that of Colleen Dewhurst (who is the reason I watch this over and over again). I loved hearing what the director had to say about her personally and wished there were more of that type of commentary instead of how the lighting crew lite one scene after another to reflect the time of day or year. Lighting, scenery and costuming are all important factors in any film, especially a period piece, and it's important to acknowledge it, but it appeared to hold center stage in the director's commentary on the making of the miniseries. One thing I would like to note is that regardless of what another reviewer said, Kevin Sullivan does know Anne Shirley and all the other characters, and the story line very well. He never makes the comment that he doesn't know why a scene worked well, only that the reason the scenes worked were because of the consumate acting ability of the actors involved in the scene. Kevin Sullivan is the reason this miniseries was, and is, so successful. It is Sullivan's vision that brought the story to the screen in such a manner that has made it literally a worldwide sensation.
I had some trouble finding the commentary for the first part of the series. The first 95 minutes is on one side of the disk with the remainder on the flip side. Side B starts with a menu that gives the choice of languages and the director's commentary. Side A does not. After flipping through all the special features and not finding the commentary I finally selected the "languages" menu and found it in there.
Whether you've seen this in the past or not, this is one series that is wholesome enough for the entire family and yet quite entertaining as well.
Movie Review: The Cornerstone of the Kevin Sullivan Franchise
Summary: 5 Stars
Anne of Green Gables is a beloved children's book series, and the story of Lucy Maud Montgomery's feisty carrot-topped orphan is presented in a winning production by Canadian filmmaker Kevin Sullivan.
When iconic books are turned into films the fans of the original books hold their breaths. Faithful reproductions seem more common now with the The Lord of the Rings - The Motion Picture Trilogy (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition) or Pride and Prejudice - The Special Edition (A&E, 1996), for example, but in the early 80's there were few "good" examples and many bad ones. (I still haven't seen a good film version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the best version of The Count of Monte Cristo (Modern Library Classics) is the 1970s version with Richard Chamberlain - The Count of Monte - Cristo [ 1975, IMPORT , ALL REGIONS ].
Sullivan and company used brilliant casting and accurate, lush locations to give us an "Anne" that feels right. Megan Follows beat out thousands of young actresses for the coveted part of Anne Shirley, and Colleen Dewhurst and Richard Farnsworth were never better than here in the part of brother-sister surrogate parents Marilla and Mathew Cuthbert.
This production swept the Gemini awards that year (Canadian Emmies) with 10 Awards including Best Dramatic Miniseries, Most Popular Program, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Writing, Best Music, Costumes, Photography, and Production Design/Art Direction. It also won the Emmy that year for Best Children's Program.
The Awards barely give you the gist of the enormous outpouring of good will that accompanies a viewing of this program. The character of Anne, although a downtrodden orphan, is nonetheless feisty and intelligent and determined to make her way in the world. You can't help but pull for the girl, who begins the movie as slave labor to a hot-headed couple with ten children before being sent back to the orphanage after the husband suffers a heart attack.
The elderly Cuthberts are looking to take in a young boy to help Mathew with work in the fields. They are instead sent Anne, who charms her way into Mathew's heart in the buggy ride back to Green Gables. The film hooks the viewer in this sequence and you can't help but want to know what happens next.
Special kudos to Richard Farnsworth, who makes Mathew such an endearing and kind-spirited character that he received many marriage proposals in letters from adoring women despite being nearly seventy.
There are few on-screen moments anywhere more heartwarming than the sequence where Farnsworth goes to the general store to buy Anne a dress with puffed sleeves, then the following scene where Anne tries on said dress.
Anne of Green Gables was followed by an equally excellent sequel: Anne of Avonlea. Unfortunately, this was followed by a third installment: Anne, the Continuing Story, which was frankly an abomination compared to the first two installments.
Movie Review: 'Anne'-mazing
Summary: 5 Stars
I must say it now to get it out; I love, love, LOVE the Anne of Green Gables books, and read them all completely without knowing there were mini-serieses based on the books. I was delighted, and saw the second one (Anne of Avonlea) first. (It was fine, but I wish that they hadn't have used so much of Anne of Windy Poplars in it). So I was dying to see how well the one stuck to the book. I was simply elated with this movie.
Anne Shirley (or Cordelia, as she prefers) is a twelve-year-old orphan that has an unending imagination and can chatter away the day. After being moved from house to house after her parents died as a child, Anne arrives at an orphanage and is soon adopted by the Cuthbert siblings; Marilla, a strict and moral woman, and Matthew, a quiet, gentle man. But once Anne arrives, she learns that she was supposed to be a boy, and the Cuthberts debate over keeping her. (No surprise, they do keep her, or else this movie wouldn't be four hours long).
But the Cuthberts don't know what they're in for. Anne has a temper to match her woefully-colored red hair, and gets into numerous scrapes. Megan Follows is the perfect Anne, giving her a smooth voice, but gives Anne an unassuming nature of her peculair dreams and notions. As Anne matures to sixteen, we see how she changes, and also how she changes everyone around her, but keeps her small flights of fancy and her unending love of live and change. (One thing that I wish they kept was Anne's 'the bend in the road' speech, one of the most beautiful expressions of change penned down).
The supporting characters are just as wonderful as Anne. Colleen Dewhurst is picture-perfect as Marilla, with her strict and up-right nature well portrayed, but the softer, more emotional moments are touchingly well-acted as well. Richard Farnsworth was also well cast as Matthew, being the kind and quiet man L.M. Montgomery wrote and wanted. His love for Anne is beautifully written and expressed, and the relationship between him and Anne (as well as Marilla and Anne) is very touching, and could never be as wonderful if they were related to her. Patricia Hamilton is a very entertaining Rachel Lynde, very gossipy, but with a hard-edged voice that makes her like the matriarch of Avonlea. Schuyler Grant as Diana Barry, Anne's best `bosom friend,' is soft-voiced and the perfect person to juxtapose Anne, with an air of giggling schoolgirl about her. Jonathan Crombie is like Gilbert Blythe in the flesh; curly brown hair and cute, and slightly debonair but also genuine when he learns not to meddle with the fiercely-tempered Anne Shirley. (Though, they did romanticize Gilbert a little too much, you can't ask for much).
But, of course, with every book-to-movie adaptation, there's the question of is it like the book? And it is wonderfully so in this movie. I am simply in delight at how close this is to the book, and how Kevin Sullivan kept nearly all of Anne's adventures. But what amazed me even more was that the script was nearly verbatim to the book. I could just quote the book directly from the movie. It was amazing how close they kept it.
Anne of Green Gables is, over all, a real beautiful movie based on a lovely book. You can watch it from many perspectives, from an artist's point of view at how the shots were shot, or from an adoring fan of the books like me, and you will still be enchanted and find it as a lovely movie. It's, very simply put, `Anne'-mazing.
Movie Review: haunting treasure
Summary: 5 Stars
My wife and I bought the "100 Aniversary" book of Anne of Green Gables" last October when we visited the author's home on Prince Edward's Island. After my wife finally finished it, I picked it up and could not put it down. The movie on this DVD is the same way. It sticks pretty well to the novel and only leaves out some scenes with the pastors wife.
Meghan Follows should get a lifetime achievement award for this unforgettable performance. She is absolutely beguiling in portraying Anne's innocence, intelligence, imagination and goodness. This is a movie you'll watch over and over; children's behavior may change after reading the book or watching this movie, such is the impact of this story. I am a pediatrician and am recommending it for all the girls I see Anne's age. Most have never heard of it tho most moms saw the movie on PBS and loved it.
All of the other characters in the movie, esp her adoptive parents give wonderful performances. Will stop here and offer some quotes from the book/movie:
Anne Shirley: My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes. That's a sentence I read once and I say it over to comfort myself in these times that try the soul.
Mrs. Cadbury: Tell me what you know about yourself.
Anne Shirley: Well, it really isn't worth telling, Mrs. Cadbury... but if you let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself you'd find it a lot more interesting.
Anne Shirley: This is the most tragical thing that has ever happened to me
Anne Shirley: Mrs. Hammond told me that God made my hair red on purpose and I've never cared for Him since.
[Marilla, commenting on whether or not she'll keep Anne]
Marilla Cuthbert: If she can avoid catastrophe two days in a row, I might have a chance to make up my mind.
Anne has just fallen from a roof]
Diana Barry: Just say one word and tell me if you're killed!
Anne Shirley: No... but I think I've been rendered unconscious.
Anne Shirley: Tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it.
Read more at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088727/quotes
By all, buy this DVD!!
Movie Review: 15 years later I still love it
Summary: 5 Stars
Fifteen years ago, a month before my 14th birthday, I got the chicken pox and had to stay home from school for over a week. That's when I first seen Anne of Green Gables. My mom told me about this movie that was on and I insisted I thought it was stupid. Well, I've had to eat my words ever since! She finally got me to watch it and watch it I did!!! Over and over again. I can't tell you how many times I've watched it in the past fifteen years. Anne of Green Gables is the story of Anne (spelled with an E) Shirley, an orphan girl who goes to live with an elderly brother and sister, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, on Prince Edward Island. She gets there only to find out there's been some mistake and the Cuthberts really wanted a boy, not a girl. Marilla puts Anne through a trial period to see if they'll keep her. Matthew falls in love with Anne on the way home from the train station and wants to keep her. They decide to keep her and the rest of the movie is the story of her growing up with her bosom friend, Diana Barry, and her rival in school, Gilbert Blythe, and life with Matthew and Marilla on PEI.
This is a wonderful movie. Megan Follows is absolutely brillant. She is charming and spirited and really brings to life the character of Anne. Richard Farnsworth and Colleen Dewhurst are wonderful as Matthew and Marilla. Mr. Farnsworth really portrays the shy, backwards Matthew to a T. And Ms. Dewhurst does an equally excellent job as Marilla, the stern, but loving disciplinarian. Jonathan Crombie is great as Gilbert Blythe. There seems to be a natural chemistry between him and Megan Follows that lights up the screen. One can almost forget they are acting and actually believe they are Anne and Gilbert.
I had recently just bought the DVD and watched it yesterday. I must say that after watching this movie 15 years after I first watched it,that it really stands the test of time. This movie is just as great as it was that first time (after I finally gave in and watched it :) ) This is entertainment for the family or for the romantic heart that wants to watch a feel good story!
This is a movie to be treasured for years.