Linkshoch Wonderful Movie

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

mark.waltz Shirley reached the peak of her career with this post civil war drama that has qualities about it both pleasing and disturbing. With servants (no longer slaves) who can't spell and seemingly addicted to the old way of life, this view of the old south is overloaded with charming, if stubborn white folk and mammy and pappy colored folk who love their white employers who probably once "owned" them. Shirley is there to charm the viewer, but it is obvious that her performance is one that suffers from too much direction rather than creating a fleshed out character.Old southern colonel Lionel Barrymore has disowned daughter Evelyn Venable for marrying a northern soldier. They return years later with young daughter Shirley who quickly charms the mustache off of grumpy grandpa, dances up the stairs with butler Bill Robinson and goes to a baptism with lovable maid Hattie McDaniel and listens to classic negro spirituals. Will a reconciliation between Barrymore and Venables be facilitated by Shirley? Dumb question, easy answer.This song of the south is absolute fable and only enjoyable as long as you view it from that perspective. Shirley has some strong moments, but it is obvious that she is directed to scowl and told when to flash the dimples. I found her being made an honorary colonel quite a cloying moment, but the magic hits when she teams up with Robinson in dance. Audiences of the 1930's may have been fooled, but the artificiality of most of her performances is very clear today.

PamelaShort When watching this Shirley Temple film, it is easy to see why The Little Colonel was such a crowd-pleaser. This film has a long Old South story to tell, that is both sentimental and predictable. The story has young Shirley Temple up against gruff old Lionel Barrymore, as her stubborn grandfather. For her sidekick, she has favourite Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and the two of them are sheer magic together. One of their best scenes is the famous staircase dance. But the film was in danger of losing Lionel Barymore. At the time this movie was being filmed, Mr.Barrymore was suffering with severe arthritis, in extreme pain he had difficulty walking. A large blackboard was wheeled on-stage with all of Barrymore's lines chalked up. During filming he was stumbling on his lines and innocent Shirley Temple told him what his line was-- 'Mr. Barrymore, you're supposed to say so-and-so here.'The humiliated veteran actor exploded, yelling "I'm thirty years in this business!" Being warned not to swear in front of the child, Mr. Barrymore tried his best to storm of the set to his dressing room. Director David Butler went after him and came back with the bad news, he felt Shirley had made him look ridiculous, and to get somebody else to do the picture. It was now up to Shirley Temple to go alone and make up with him. She did, by telling him he was the best actor in the world, and asking for his autograph. As always, little Shirley Temple saves the day. It should also be noted that Shirley was known as "One Take Temple" because of her amazing ability to memorize her lines as well as all of the other players, before she could even read or write. The sheer magnetism of Shirley Temple always makes The Little Colonel a very enjoyable film to watch.

ccthemovieman-1 It's odd that Shirley Temple made two similar movies in the same year, both involving Civil War-type story lines and her character being very similar. "The Littlest Rebel" took place during the Civil War and "The Little Colonel" took place right after the war.For some reason, I get an extra feeling being choked up seeing Shirley melting a crabby old man's heart as she did in some of her films, this being one of them. Here, it's Lionel Barrymore who was fun to watch in any film.The lead female role was played by Evelyn Venable and she really wasn't up to the standards, beauty-wise, set by previous Temple adult feminine leads such s Gloria Stuart, Karen Moreley, Rochelle Hudson, etc. But, that's not important.The story was more important and in case - surprise - I found this to run a distant second to the aforementioned "The Littlest Rebel." This movie was, frankly, boring in comparison.I am not one of the crying Liberals who boycott Temple''s films because blacks in these movies were denigrated. Unfortunately, that's what you saw in 1930s films....and what's done is done. However, the black characters in here are just plain treated embarrassingly bad. Everyone's Mr. Nice Guy (mine, too) Bill Robinson, didn't come on the scene and dance with Shirley until later in the film when I had lost interest.Temple, meanwhile, is so cute that she's even likable when she's a brat, as she acts several times with the old man (but apologizes later for her behavior).It's still a good film but I prefer the "Rebel" over the "Colonel" in the battle of these 1935 Civil War-themed stories.

Snow4849 With all of her usual show-stealing spark, Shirley Temple delivers another fun family classic as Lloyd Sherman in "The Little Colonel." Proving yet again that there's no problem she can't solve, Shirley reconciles an old grudge between her young mother (played by Evelyn Venable) and her crusty southern grandfather (played by Lionel Barrymore), who disowned his daughter for marrying a Yankee. Shirley's classic tap dance up the staircase with Bojangles Robinson will remind all of her fans of what a true dancing prodigy she really was. And a few scenes later, her song "Love's Young Dream" will show you why her singing is not as well remembered as her dancing. Don't get me wrong: Shirley shines in fast, snappy songs, but her voice was not made for slow numbers like this one."The Little Colonel" is a nice family film, but except for the iconic staircase dance, there is little to distinguish it from most of Shirley's childhood flicks. The claim that this film smashed through racial barriers by placing Shirley Temple opposite African-American screen legends Bojangles Robinson and Hattie McDaniel is almost laughable. Rather, Robinson and McDaniel play complete racial stereotypes: Robinson is the clichéd childish, comical servant ("The stereotyped picture of gay song-singing cotton pickers," to quote Maya Angelou). Watch him stand idly by while Barrymore fusses and fumes at him, because he knows "the old colonel don't mean no harm." Meanwhile McDaniel is a Mammy figure, loyal, caring, and always glad to serve the white folks (McDaniel later won an Oscar for playing the same Mammy figure in "Gone With the Wind"). In her famous novel, "The Bluest Eye," Toni Morrison writes, "I hated Shirley. Not because she was cute, but because she danced with Bojangles, who was my friend, my uncle, my daddy, and who ought to have been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me. Instead he was enjoying, sharing, giving a lovely dance thing with one of those little white girls whose socks never slid down under their heels."But one cannot really expect better from a film made in 1935, when America was, unfortunately, still in the Dark Ages as far as African-Americans and their rights were concerned. Such clichéd roles were the only acting jobs available for African-Americans at the time, and so Robinson's and McDaniel's talents are largely untapped as their characters completely lack the depth given to white actors. For example, Lionel Barrymore's Colonel Lloyd has both positive and negative characteristics: He is a temperamental hothead who remains bitter over the Civil War, but he is also a southern gentleman who immediately brings his new neighbors a bouquet of flowers to welcome them.