Swiss Family Robinson

• TOP NOTCH (my top choices)
• HONORABLE MENTION (well worth watching)
• YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER (I like them but you might not)
• CLASSICS (Great movies up through the 1960s - many don't have any rating)


SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (1960) - PG - TOP NOTCH
 John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, James MacArthur

Summary -  A Swiss family must survive being shipwrecked on a deserted island.

Cautions - Ummm... there's pirates? Oh, and if you're concerned about kid's getting ideas about digging tiger pits and throwing coconut grenades, you might want to skip this one.

Commentary - So some of you may have seen this when you were kids and you might be asking yourselves now - How does it hold up today? Answer: Amazingly well! There has only ever been one really good stranded on a desert island movie and this is it. At the box office, the film took roughly $40,000,000 (around $367,000,000 in today's money), making it one of the most successful family films ever made.

One of the most remarkable things about it is how real it is. I don't mean the story per se but the way the animals and dangers were filmed. Find the newest DVD and there is an amazing "making of" documentary that shows that - YES James MacArthur really did wrestle a real anaconda in a real mangrove swamp. YES little Kevin Corcoran really was holding a coconut with live explosives in it! They had the stars doing things that would never be allowed today - and it really holds up on screen.

It's great family fun! In a world of such slick and fast paced storytelling, my boys were just as captivated with Swiss Family Robinson as I was all those years ago.

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