ddern%BBN-UNIX@sri-unix.UUCP (04/10/84)
From: Daniel Dern <ddern@BBN-UNIX> I highly recommend the new "tarzan" movie GREYSTOKE, as both a movie-goer and an sf lovers. A lot of money was spent, successfully -- a surprising feat. I'm not going to bother going into long detail here. Good color/images/composition, etc. Good detail. Adequate acting. Lovely sets and locales. I was reminded at times of THE BLACK STALLION, for the long non-verbal sequences, and NEVER CRY WOLF, for the human:non-human and non-human:non-human interactions. As a science fiction person of long addiction, I did NOT find myself at any point offended by unreasonable stupidities a la SPACE:1999, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, etc. Rather, it had that undefinable essence shared by STAR TREK II, THE LAST UNICORN (otherwise problematic, I admit) of being done by people who understood the subject matter and cared about it enought to do it well. The movie departs markedly from the original TARZAN book. I think this was a wise move. (I have the feeling this is somehow based on Phillip Jose Farmer's "biography" of "the man the Tarzan books were based on". They never call him Tarzan, by the way.) Lots of humorous touches throughout, clearly deliberate. NOTE: I attended with an 11-year old girl. She was somewhat troubled by the realism of the bloodier ape-killing sequences -- on a humanitarian, queasy basis, apparantly, as she has sat through ROCKY III, or FRIDAY THE 17th, or whatever, without comparable discomfort. So it is not necessarily for children of all ages. But it is an honest film, given that -- there is no gratuitious sex or violence, and it is clear that the violent stuff is painful and not pleasant to the violentee. By the way, those big greyish looking critters tromping around the Greystoke castle are Scottish deerhounds, and the smaller ones appear to be puppies of same. Daniel Dern