DVD/BLU-RAY REVIEW

_The Adventures of Mark Twain: Collector's Edition_. Directed by Will
Vinton. Magnolia Home Entertainment. Released on DVD and Blu-Ray. 86 minutes
plus more than an hour of bonus material. DVD: $14.98. Blu-Ray: $19.98. ASIN
B009DA745W.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Mark Dawidziak

Copyright (c) 2013 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.

The magnificent airship sits in a Missouri field, surrounded by astounded
gawkers. With a paddle wheel at the stern and a gaudy pilot house perched at
the top, it appears to be some kind of delightfully bizarre high-flying
hybrid: part Wizard of Oz balloon, part Mississippi steamboat, part carnival
attraction.

A banner hanging from the red blimpish center proclaims, "Halley's Comet or
Bust." Standing at the lower deck, Mark Twain addresses an understandably
curious crowd, explaining the meaning of those words. Twain, dressed in his
trademark white suit and brandishing a cigar, tells the wide-eyed onlookers
that he intends to rendezvous with the celestial visitor. "I go to meet the
comet," he proclaims. "Yes, indeed, I surely plan to . . . Oh, I'm looking
forward to that."

It is the last adventure, as he well knows. "I came in with Halley's Comet
in 1835," Twain said in 1909. "It is coming again next year, and I expect to
go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't
go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are
these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out
together.' "

He will make this trip. He will make it in this spectacular vessel of his
own construction and design. See it? See it sitting in that Missouri field
under an incredibly blue summer sky? Tom Sawyer sees it, and he can't resist
the temptation to climb on board and share the adventures. How could he?
Huckleberry Finn is reluctant to accompany his comrade, but, as Tom tells
him, "You couldn't see an adventure hanging from the end of your nose."

Before long, the ship is taking off with not only Tom and Huck as stowaways,
but a frog named Homer, too. Becky Thatcher is on board, as well, and there
might just be some type of mysterious stranger lurking in the shadows. They
all require company. So follow Tom, scramble on board, and take flight with
Mark Twain as your lightning pilot. Go along on _The Adventures of Mark
Twain_.

This is the irresistible invitation that opens _The Adventures of Mark
Twain_, director Will Vinton's daring and imaginative 86-minute film
recently released in blu-ray and DVD collector's editions by Magnolia Home
Entertainment. Something of a lost gem, the wonderfully clever movie was
acclaimed by critics but baffled most audiences when it hit movie theaters
in 1985.

Screenplay author Susan Shadburne seizes on a famous Twain line during this
opening sequence: "The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea
succeeds." In the mid-1980s, Vinton, the innovative filmmaker who coined and
trademarked the term Claymation, was the man with the new idea.

Vinton was then known as the Oscar-winning director and producer of short
stop-motion animated films. That wasn't the new idea. Stop-motion animation
had been around almost as long as filmmaking. Stop-motion (or stop-frame) is
that painstaking process where models are moved and photographed frame by
frame, creating the illusion of movement. The title character in the 1933
version of _King Kong_ was a small model brought to life by stop-motion
photography. Vinton's models were fashioned from clay. Hence the term
Claymation. His new idea was to make a feature-length film using only this
technique. The result was _The Adventures of Mark Twain_.

A feature-length animated film meant only one thing to audiences of 1985:
kid's stuff. Offbeat, whimsical and sometimes quite dark, _The Adventures of
Mark Twain_ wasn't quite what you'd call Mickey Mouse fare. The target
audiences for Vinton and his team were teenagers and young adults. But it
was misguidedly marketed as a movie for kids.

"This isn't really a children's movie, and it was never meant to be," said
the film's executive producer, Hugh Kennedy Tirrell. "We tested it, and it
played best with college kids and teens. Then it got a G rating. It killed
our target audience before we started. We were stunned and very
disappointed."

Timing is everything in show business, and _The Adventures of Mark Twain_,
as this bewitching DVD/blu-ray release reminds us, was both slightly and
light-years ahead of its time. The year after its release, Vinton hit with
his California Raisins commercials, which became an international Claymation
phenomenon. Ten years after _The Adventures of Mark Twain_, the
Pixar-produced _Toy Story_ made computer-animated feature films all the
rage.

You realize how far computer-generated animation has gone with such films as
_Shrek_ and _Finding Nemo_, but not even this realization can put a dent in
your admiration for the boundless imagination, invention, and ambition that
fuel the airship gliding through _The Adventures of Mark Twain_. Indeed,
your appreciation only multiplies when you fully grasp the challenges Vinton
and his crew faced while trying to launch this wondrous strange craft.

There were no computers. Sticking to a purist's approach, Vinton insisted
that everything, even sets, be fashioned from clay and animated through
stop-motion. And it was all done on a frazzled shoestring budget of (ready?)
$1.5 million. Working in the basement of a house in Portland, Ore., Vinton
and his adventurous crew of 17 people took four years to complete the film.
Let's put that in some perspective, just to get some notion of what kind of
effort went into _The Adventures of Mark Twain_. The 2009 Pixar film _Up_
had a budget of $175 million and a crew of about 1,000 people.

What emerged from this Portland basement is one of the very few outstanding
films inspired by either Twain's life or his works--in this case, inspired
by Twain's life and his works. _The Adventures of Mark Twain_ follows an
elderly Twain as he pilots the magical airship toward his meeting with
Halley's Comet. The vehicle and journey suggest the Jules Verne-ish _Tom
Sawyer Abroad_, one of many Twain tales slyly referenced in Shadburne's
script. There are rattling echoes of this 1894 book, and we quickly see how
splendidly Claymation can be utilized to visualize moments from Twain's
writings.

The film begins in a lighthearted mood with the children (and us) charmed by
the witty, grandfatherly Twain (voiced by James Whitmore). Noticing Homer,
Twain remarks that he's "an uncommon fine frog." It was a frog like Homer,
he explains to the children, that put him in "the writing business." It's a
short Claymation hop from there to a playful telling of "The Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Homer literally melts into the tale,
becoming part of the familiar proceedings as a superbly expressive Dan'l
Webster. When an outraged Jim Smiley realizes he has been hornswoggled,
Homer jumps out of the tale, back with Twain, Tom, Becky, and Huck.

This is just one of dozens of fanciful little touches sure to delight those
familiar with Twain's life and works. When the ship's load needs to be
lightened, one of the items gleefully tossed overboard is the Paige
typesetter that caused Twain so much trouble. As we make our way toward the
comet, we are treated to excerpts from the "Diaries" of Adam and Eve, "The
Chronicle of Young Satan," and "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven."
Serving up intriguing insights into Twain's mind and writing, Shadburne's
script also features regular borrowings from _Life on the Mississippi_,
_Puddn'head Wilson_, _Following the Equator_, the autobiography, the
letters, and the speeches.

The longest and most touching excerpts feature Adam and Eve, but the most
deeply disturbing is the scene from "The Chronicle of Young Satan." The film
glides into spooky and unnerving territory when Tom, Becky, and Huck wander
into a dark room where a young angel named Satan molds a village and people
from, well, clay. They watch in horror as an emotionless Satan casually
crushes the village and destroys the crude humanoid forms. Satan's mask
transforms into a death mask, shrinking into the merest glint in Twain's
eye. Vinton pulls back the perspective to reveal Twain's pain-etched face.
It's a haunting and unnerving sequence that brilliantly exploits the
flexibility of Claymation storytelling.

"Sometimes the old man seems powerful unhappy," Huck says. Sometimes he is.
Taking on darker tones, therefore, the movie keeps the children guessing why
Twain seems so mirthful one moment, so miserable the next. Even the interior
of the airship plays skillfully on this troubling contradiction, with bits
and pieces suggesting the Clemens family's Hartford house, a steamboat
cabin, and Captain Nemo's submarine, the _Nautilus_, featured in two Jules
Verne novels. There is much humor, of course. There are messages of hope.
There also is much talk of death and dying. That's because, before this
dreamy, sometimes nightmarish voyage is over, _The Adventures of Mark Twain_
will explore the theory that the writer was an endlessly fascinating study
in duality.

Few adages get trotted out more reliably and regularly than the one that
assures us, "There are two sides to every story." This familiar proposition
certainly has been assiduously applied to Samuel Langhorne Clemens ever
since Justin Kaplan kicked the whole duality approach into high gear with
his landmark 1966 biography, the Pulitzer Prize-winning _Mr. Clemens and
Mark Twain_.

The title to Kaplan's incredibly influential work trumpeted the idea that
there were two sides to Mark Twain. And Twain provided no end of fuel for
this psychological line of inquiry. There was his deep fascination with
Robert Louis Stevenson's _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_. Ther
e were all those stories with twins and doubles. There were the numerous and
fascinating contradictions. There was that plaintively provocative line from
_Following the Equator_: "Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he
never shows to anybody." There was his very choice of a pen name, with its
tease for two and two for tease.

So, understandably, many a Twain scholar has followed Justin Kaplan's lead,
deciding that this is, indeed, the story of a man with two sides in constant
conflict. It has become the stuff of academic studies, analytical criticism,
and, yes, rich debate. And how about an animated feature film? Why not?

So Tom, Huck, and Becky are encountering two Twains: the one in the white
suit representing the genial humorist and beloved family author; the other,
in a dark suit, representing, well, the dark Twain. It turns out to be quite
the exhilarating ride, more faithful to the spirit of Mark Twain than the
earlier film titled _The Adventures of Mark Twain_ (the 1944 Warner Bros.
"biography" starring Fredric March) or the many disappointing Hollywood
adaptations of his novels. A constant marvel in look and content, Vinton's
_The Adventures of Mark Twain_ is a stirring realization of Shadburne's goal
when fashioning the script: "a film that speaks to grownups looking for
meaning."

The DVD and blu-ray packaging lives up to its billing as the collector's
edition, with extras that include interviews with Vinton, Shadburne,
composer Billy Scream, character designer and lead animator Barry Bruce, and
the animator in charge of Huck Finn, Mark Gustafson. There also are short
behind-the-scenes features on Claymation and the film's music.

Technically, both the DVD and blu-ray (1080p transfer) look pretty dazzling
and both the audio and video transfers appear strong. There are some blips,
given the age of the original film, but the overall picture quality is
impressive. Overall, I'd say we're in the crystal range -- particularly for
a 1985 film.

Interested? Then climb on board this airship and head for the comet. It's a
trip well worth taking, and you couldn't be in better company. It was in
_Tom Sawyer Abroad_ that Twain told us, "I have found out there ain't no
surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel
with them." Travel with this crew and you'll find plenty to like.

_____

ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Mark Dawidziak is the TV critic for the Cleveland Plain
Dealer and the artistic director of northeast Ohio's Largely Literary
Theater Company. His many published books include _Mark My Words: Mark Twain
on Writing_ and _Horton Foote's The Shape of the River: The Lost Teleplay
About Mark Twain_.