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 They tell us that we can go back to the time of the Revolutionary War and
"relive some of America's proudest moments." Johnny Tremain, Paul Revere and
the Sons of Liberty (described here as "gallant") "rebelliously toss English
tea into the waters of Boston Harbor." 1957, 80 minutes, VHS
I had always suspected that those snobby British goons that tried to stifle all
our basic human rights by laying a big tax on our imported tea were defeated
through the interference of some plucky kids. Since the novel this movie is
based on won a Newbury Award, I have to assume that it's the God's honest truth
and that the colonists were such great guys that after they stormed the ships
in Boston Harbor and dumped all the tea overboard, that they then took time to
swap the decks and generally cleaned up the boat when they finished with their
consumer protest. Likewise, I'm sure that officers in the British military
stood around in their houses after getting run from Concorde or Lexington or
Gettysburg or where ever, talking about how they were destined to lose because
they were denying us human rights. Why, I bet that Osama is sitting in
Pakistan right know telling all his senior officials that he's doomed because of
how great our American ideals are. You know, what this country needs right now
is a whole bunch of Johnny Tremains, preferably ones that can speak Arabic,
to go over there and root out these anti-American whiners. Wide-eyed
enthusiasm combined with the ignorance of youth are always good qualities on a
suicide mission. Now, this Johnny Tremain movie was made by Walt Disney in
1957, which means that the acting by the youngsters on the cast (mostly Hal
Stalmaster, who apparently never took anyone's advice to change that name and
Laura Patten, who'd played that poor white trash scurve kid in Song Of The South) come across as Mouseketeers playing dress up and being more interested in
maintaining these beaming smiles and spewing out their lines with glee than
they were with showing anything remotely resembling an emotion that someone who
lived in those turbulent times would have experienced. The result is a
revolutionary war movie that has the vague feel of a theme park, with everyone
in their bright new costumes and Boston looking like a super clean part of
Disneyland (Patriotland or something) so that you would expect to go into
Paul Revere's shop and be able to get a funnel cake and/or stuffed Mickey Mouse.  Johnny is an apprentice silversmith who is one of those self-absorbed cocky
guys that doesn't have any time for politics and these Sons of Liberty that are
printing up their anti-British propaganda. We all know that Johnny is
basically a good kid at heart, because his ego and pride show up in such
positive ways as wanting to work really hard and make something of himself.
Shoot, the kid's biggest sin is working on the Sabbath! One of our greatest
heroes (well, according to an award-winning children's book anyway) is a guy
whose biggest crime was being a workaholic. No wonder we left all those lazy
Europeans in the dust on the world stage. While they were eating their
truffles, listening to their bad music and sucking up to imbecilic inbred
royalty, we were working overtime to build this great nation from the ground
up. U-S-A! U-S-A! (Several times during the course of this film I broke out
into spontaneous patriotic chants, usually whenever Johnny would do something
like take on the British army without so much as musket - "I figure I'll pick
me up a rifle off a one the Redcoats we kill!" That's the suicidal can-do
attitude Uncle Sam loves!). Since Johnny is not initially predisposed to be a
patriot (and would be rightfully hanged once us good guys won - you're either
with us or against us, Commie!) something must happen in his life to turn him
onto to freedom, truth, and the American Way (probably called something else
during this time, probably like "tax abatement" or something). Johnny, like
all great superheroes (Batman, Spider-Man, James Trafficant) has a secret
origin story that would lay the groundwork for his newly awakened
civic-mindedness. It seems that one Sabbath while he was working when he
wasn't supposed to, his wicked step-mother (actually the wife of the guy he was
working for, but the whole step-mother angle adds a lot more drama) "accidently
dumps some hot silver down and pushes Johnny's hand into it, burning it
severely. I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that we didn't end up with
a situation here along the lines of The Brute Man, but this country was founded by well-scrubbed lads with bright smiles, not
misshapen carny folks like Rondo Hatton.  What follows are Johnny's darkest days. He's given the boot from the
silversmithing job he so slavishly devoted himself to (he would often go to
Paul Revere to get tips on how to do it since his boss was old and senile). He
tries to sign up for every job in town and it's always the same story: just
when they're about to give Johnny a job, they stick their hand out to shake on
it and Johnny is forced to reveal his crispy-fried hand. Even though Johnny
probably has a claim under the Revolutionaries With Disabilities Act, you can't
help but giggle as he dejectedly puts his mutant hand in his pocket and sits on
the
curb all beaten down. Johnny has no choice but to go to the final option. No,
he
hasn't taken his musket and climbed up to the church tower to get himself on
the news (though that's always something you should consider when you lose your
job). He sees this rich fat dude (Twice Told Tales' Sebastian Cabot) named
Lyte. Johnny's mama told him on her deathbed that he was part of the Lyte
family
and gave him a christening cup (fancy name for beer mug) to prove it. When
Johnny busts this out on Lyte (he reminds you of Jon Lovitz unfortunately),
Lyte frames him up for stealing it. Johnny gets tossed into the slammer, but
guess who comes to his aid? The Sons of Liberty! Josiah Quincy, the slickest
mouthpiece in the colonies says that he'll represent him even though Johnny
can't pay him, because it'll get him some good pub on Larry King Live or something.
Josiah babbles some mumbo jumbo about how no one is free if one man is
wrongfully accused, even if he was trying to get something out of Lyte simply
for being related to him. There's another young guy that works for Revere who
hangs out with Johnny and shows him the revolutionary ropes named Rab. He
smiles a lot and says stuff like "the Sons of Liberty help each other
out!"  Johnny beats the rap, chiefly through the compelling testimony of his
soon-to-be girlfriend Cilla, and discovers that maybe all this revolutionary
stuff might be alright as an occupation after all (shoot, look how it worked
out for Fidel!). He joins up, helping to send messages about meetings,
bringing punch up to the men that would soon free this country from the British
so
that the slave trade could begin in earnest, and riding a horse named Goblin.
Goblin doesn't really get any screen time which was disappointing because I had
assumed there would be a scene where Goblin has to jump over a moat and get
into a jousting event to defeat George III and win Guenevere's heart, but I
guess this is just a movie and you can't expect it to hew that close to
history. There's a doctor patriot that tells Johnny he can fix up his hand no
sweat, but Johnny knows he don't get paid until the last act and realizing the
drama he could milk from it if he kept that deformed little thing awhile
longer, he
declines. And as far as his injury goes, it's just one of those deals where
all the fingers have grown together. That sounds like it would be the natural
outcome of burning it and it also sounds pretty easy for a guy in 1775 to fix.
The movie then concentrates on showing us the Boston Tea Party and tries to
explain what was behind it (something about the Brits trying to tell us we had
to drink Earl Grey instead of Darjeeling). It came off more as a fraternity
prank than as act of defiance against an evil empire (everyone was in fine
spirits, dressed as Indians, really polite to the crew of the ship all while
some British admiral watched on chuckling like he was Dean Wormer or
something). One thing I learned about the independence movement from this movie
was there was a lot more meetings than there was guys knocking rotten yellow
British teeth out. I suppose they tried to amp up the educational quotient of
the movie (or more likely the propaganda quotient) when they had that crazy old
coot James Otis on there going on and on about freedom and the price it costs
and how it's up to young hotshots like Hal Stalmaster and Heath Ledger to whip
some Rooskie, I mean British arse. A little of that goes a long way. I was
wishing that Otis had been hit by lighting about ten years earlier than it did
in real life. They run through the expected crap regarding the beginnings of the war with
the "one
if by land, two if by sea gag" and then they finish the movie with a variety of
battle scenes between the colonists and the redcoats. These scenes lack any
drama or power as they consist of guys standing around firing their muskets and
either falling down or running away. You don't get real involved because that
punk Johnny, whom we're supposed to care about doesn't do diddly and half the
time we don't even focus on him (he doesn't even have a gun! What kind of
America was this where a teen-ager didn't even have access to a weapon - you
know, to
defend himself and stuff?). I don't think I'd want any of my step-kids or
bastard children to learn their history from this movie (best if they get that
from Pops). I certainly hope the book was a bit deeper in its characterization
of Johnny and of his conversion from self-absorbed boob to crippled up
do-gooder, because this movie was all about Johnny smiling and just going with
the flow for no good reason other than he got acquitted at trial. It's a good
idea to try and get kids involved with history by interweaving a young person
into these events so that they can become familiar with guys like Paul Revere
and Sam Adams (well, familiar beyond his sissy beer that is), Disney though
just did a prettified whitewash of things and put these inept kids through a
script that was so simplistic they couldn't screw it up too badly. The movie's
penchant for trotting out these various famous dead guys for speeches combined
with the underdeveloped and unnecessary subplot with Lyte (promptly dropped
after the Boston Tea Party) rob the movie of any sustained power the subject
matter could have and should have elicited. There's probably a compelling story
here (you'll have to read the book to confirm that), but Disney's obsession
with lowest common denominator family entertainment renders this one pretty
much into just another cookie cutter live action effort they used to urp up
with all kinds of regularity in the fifties and sixties.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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