I would like nothing so much as to tell you how much I loved 'The Sullivans'. Only, I didn't like it much. I appreciate the function it had in the mobilization during WW2, I recognize the heart and good will that went into its making, and I applaud the number of unexpected solutions the film-makers opted for in the first and largest part of it.
Five brothers and one sister grow up in a tight-knit family that is none too well-off, in this story that is quite authentic. The boys, because they are the ones we follow, get into scrapes, get black eyes, try out their first cigarettes and first dates, and have their first communions. By 1939 they are big boys with day jobs and dangerous hobbies, and then comes Pearl Harbor, and they are off to the Pacific, even Al the kid brother, Small Change as he is called. He was supposed to be the first of the family to get an education, but was the first to marry and have a baby. But off they are ...
The ending is classical American lore and weighs heavily on the heart. The problem with all the rest of it is, it is pretty standard 'Our Town' stuff, only not done with a lot of style or substance. It all gets a bit boring, and the acting and direction is a bit generalized and bland. "This should learn us Sullivans to stick together", Pa Sullivan says after a skirmish with big brother George, and that remains the sympathetic message of a rather simplistic film.
Five brothers and one sister grow up in a tight-knit family that is none too well-off, in this story that is quite authentic. The boys, because they are the ones we follow, get into scrapes, get black eyes, try out their first cigarettes and first dates, and have their first communions. By 1939 they are big boys with day jobs and dangerous hobbies, and then comes Pearl Harbor, and they are off to the Pacific, even Al the kid brother, Small Change as he is called. He was supposed to be the first of the family to get an education, but was the first to marry and have a baby. But off they are ...
The ending is classical American lore and weighs heavily on the heart. The problem with all the rest of it is, it is pretty standard 'Our Town' stuff, only not done with a lot of style or substance. It all gets a bit boring, and the acting and direction is a bit generalized and bland. "This should learn us Sullivans to stick together", Pa Sullivan says after a skirmish with big brother George, and that remains the sympathetic message of a rather simplistic film.