Welcome to another installment of RETRO REVIEW, where we take a look at films made before the year 2000. Today we review an animated journey through the work of one of the most famous American authors, from Claymation auteur Will Vinton: THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN.
Howdy fellow film freaks, Robert here. For those of us who grew up in the 1980s, The Adventures of Mark Twain will seem like another effort by the mass media to present an icon of the classical arts in a way that is appealing to "the youth of today." And it is that; animation is a time-honored vehicle for making something appealing to children. But unlike similar efforts which insulted their audience's intelligence by trying to make their subjects "relatable" ("Beethoven is like heavy metal music!" "Shakespeare was a rapper!") Mark Twain is faithful to its core source material, namely the man and his works. Most of the dialogue spoken by Twain in the film comes from his writings, and only the occasional liberty is taken (as far as I can tell) with the characters he created.
