Here are two deeply contrasting reviews of the new IMAX film MARK TWAIN'S
AMERICA. I was going to go down to New York to see it, but given its brief
length (47 minutes!) I'd feel a lot closer to Sam if I went out to the house
on Farmington Avenue and sat on the ombra.

Enjoy!
Kathy O'Connell
Hartford Advocate


                 Copyright 1998 BPI Communications, Inc.  
                        BPI Entertainment News Wire

 By FRANK SCHECK, The Hollywood Reporter


   For those who think the eight-story Imax screen
is suitable only for depicting the glories of nature and the
thrills of theme parks, Sony Pictures Classics is attempting to
demonstrate that the craggy face of an author who died nearly 90
years ago will prove just as captivating.
   A look at one of America's most notable wits, "Mark Twain's
America" is an uneven historical study that should do excellent
business with school groups and the like but will probably not pull
in the grosses of an "Everest."
   Presented in Imax 3-D, this new effort by Stephen Low
(responsible for one of the best Imax 3-D films, "Across the Sea
of Time") interweaves the biographical story of the man behind
such beloved fictional characters as Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn with
segments depicting both his 19th century milieu and the many
contemporary efforts to re-create it. The film makes good use of
original stereoscopic photographs from the time and archival 2-D
photos that have been digitally converted into 3-D.
   Although a bit unfocused and scattershot in its approach, the
film is an undeniably loving tribute to Twain and his times and
succeeds in humanizing a figure who has often been reduced to
caricature. Particularly moving is the detailing of the author's
twilight years, during which he lost his fortune and most of his
immediate family, including his wife and two daughters.
   In sentimental fashion, the film also depicts modern-day
celebrations of Twain's legacy, including fence whitewashing
contests, Civil War re-enactments (Twain fought briefly for the
South) and restorations of classic steam trains and riverboats.
Twain was an inventions enthusiast, and there are loving glimpses
of some of the more eccentric creations of the era. The filmmakers
also make good use of various locations central to Twain's life,
including his hometown of Hannibal, Mo.; Virginia City, Nev.; the
Mississippi River; and his final home, now a museum, in Hartford,
Conn.
   As might be expected, the film looks beautiful, with the
archival photos hauntingly poignant and the modern-day scenes
lensed with the crispness that only Imax can provide. Although the
3-D aspect is often less than necessary, it does provide particular
resonance to several scenes, including a swimming contest and a
close-up portrait of a former jumping frog (now retired). The
evocative narration is provided by Anne Bancroft.


Adventures of a River Pilot: Tall Tales on a Tall Screen

By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

   As an experienced Mississippi riverboat pilot, Mark Twain surely knew
shallows when he saw them. So he'd probably steer well clear of the thin
murky brew sloshing around under the title "Mark Twain's America in 3-D,"
the latest Imax attraction.

But as a venture capitalist who thrilled to inventions but, to his financial
detriment, didn't always know a good one when he saw it (he turned down
Alexander Graham Bell), Twain might have enjoyed the film's
three-dimensional effects while turning his withering scorn on its
pretensions to biography, history and social relevance.

The boy in him that blessed the world with Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn would
probably have got a chuckle while flinching from the mud-drenched,
volleyball-playing girl who seems to fly right off the screen and at the
onlooker. In this film, houses seem real; huge trees seem to sprout right
out of the middle of the theater, and the locomotive of a train on the
Virginia & Truckee Railroad, a line Twain himself once traveled on his way
west, seems to roar into the audience.

From the scenic standpoint, "Mark Twain's America" has its rewards. But as
it skips around between present and past, from color and 3-D segments of
modern riverboats, restored trains, the annual Tom Sawyer Days celebration
in Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Mo., and his home in Hartford, to old
black-and-white photographs of slaves, mining towns and train wrecks, the
film loses its figurative focus.

Trying to stitch Twain's biography to the broader history of the times he
lived in and then to the America of today, the hodgepodge of images, old and
new, begins to look like some cinematic salad, tossed together more as a
matter of convenience than coherence, with the pictorial outweighing the
truly pertinent.

Twain's busy, adventurous literary and personal life (1835-1910), which was
filled with rewards and tragedy, coincided with the Civil War, America's
westward expansion and its explosive growth as an industrial nation. And if
"Mark Twain's America" can't do justice to all this in its relatively brief
running time, it can at least be enjoyed for its 3-D effects and appreciated
for the curiosity it might arouse for a fuller acquaintance with Twain's
life, work and American history.

With a narration by Anne Bancroft and some of Twain's words spoken in a
treacly style by Dennis O'Connor, the film was written, directed and
produced by Stephen Low, whose credits include "Across the Sea of Time" and
"Titanica."
 
  Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company  
                             The New York Times