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He's GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!!!, Jun 28 2004
By A Customer
With his bulbous blue eyes, sculpted cheeks, full lips and cleft chin Elijah Wood looks just like a Botticelli cherub on the loose down Mark Twain's river. The spirit of the novel is captured in full in this story of a self-sufficient boy in 1840's Missouri who forsakes all conventionality to travel southward with his friend, a grown runaway slave who strives for freedom and the chance to buy his wife and children who've been sold elsewhere away from him. In the course of their adventures, which Huck (Wood) narrates so well one feels he's truly and personally speaking to you, they find themselves in the midst of a robbery, in the center of a family feud; Huck goes into girlish drag to steal necessities out from under a suspicious housewife's nose, and, with a pair of con men they meet along the way, they get sucked into becoming core players in a scam to swindle three bereaved daughters out of their inheritance, then facing an angry mob foaming for justice when the truth is revealed.Elijah Wood brilliantly portrays the lead, bringing to life one of history's most beloved characters and clearly transmitting all the earthy playfulness, confidence, determination, independence, and warmth Twain's Huck Finn possessed, made even more delightful by his rare combination of uncommon Baroque-style beauty and modern puppyish cuteness. Courtney Vance is jovial and friendly as the spirited Jim, and Robbie Coltrane and Jason Robards are comically devious as the scheming 'Duke' and 'King'. The scenery, plantation houses, river boats and banks, busy docks, and woods are all picturesque, visually authentic sights to behold. The movie does differ from the book in that Tom Sawyer is completely cut from the story, only making perhaps a brief appearance as one of the boys cheering the opening scene fight between Huck and another lad. Therefore, the whole sequence with Tom at the end isn't performed. Also, the 'N-word', which was used liberally throughout the book, has been omitted to conform with current times, replaced always by the address of 'slave'. And, of course,(LOL)in the book Jim and Huck do most of their traveling together in the nude, and we sure as heck can't have THAT going on in a Disney film or in ANY film containing a minor for that matter!
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