No, MT explicitly said he envisioned Huck as 12 or 13. But the
age is less important than the casting. Tucson has a movie
reviewer with a good ironic bite, so I can do no better than
quote Robert Cauthorn of the Arizona Daily Star:
Huck, that feral boy whose every reaction comes as a surprise,
arrives on screen with the look of a cherub and the manners of a
Smurf, courtesy of actor Elijah Wood. His eyes are as big as
saucers, his lip trembles, and there can be little doubt he's never
gone barefoot longer than a minute or two. No dirt lurks under this
Huck's fingernails. No scabs mar his milky skin. If you asked him
to clean a fish, he'd start looking for the soap. Thus, our great,
gawky, ever-reluctant hero of American fiction has been reduced to a
Mouseketeer. . . .
The voices of Huck and Jim, one of the marvels of fiction, have been
hammered into vomitous triviality. At one point, when Jim suggests
something to Huck, the boy chirps, "No way!" At least he doesn't
say "dude," as much as he might want to.
Sigh. My dad worked for Disney Productions. I was an extra on the
Mickey Mouse Club Show as a kid. I went to college on a Mickey Mouse
scholarship (literally). But I'm burning my old "E" tickets in protest.
Anyone on this list probably has a moral obligation to picket your local
theatre if it's showing the stupid thing. And no, I haven't seen it--
a 30-second commercial told me all I needed to know.
Anyone for a restaging of the Yippies' liberation of Tom Sawyer's Island
at Disneyland?
David Sewell
U of Rochester
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