The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985)

8/10

The Adventures of Mark Twain is the only full length film from California Raisins creator and claymation specialist Will Vinton. It follows Mark Twain (voiced by James Whitmore) and his literary creations Tom Sawyer (Chris Ritchie), Huckleberry Finn (Gary Krug), and Becky Thatcher (Michelle Mariana) as they search for Halley's Comet in a flying machine. I only remembered small pieces of this from my childhood and my curiosity caused me to give this a rewatch. I was pleased with how unique the whole thing is.

I was really impressed with Vinton's vision. AoMT is rather an artsy philosophical core in a general audience friendly coating.

The movie is basically an anthology of several stories of Mark Twain, but except for the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country, they're not his more commonly known ones. A lot of the narration or dialogue, especially Twain's, is comprised of quotes. The whole film is jam-packed with Twain's musings about the world, including a surprising amount of critical looks or playful jabs at religion. The movie serves as an ode to Twain and all aspects of him, including both his genius wit, but his cynicism as well. 

This is heady stuff for a family film, but it is nicely complemented by VInton's visuals. It is colorful and quite lively and creative interpretations of Twain's works. His version of Adam and Eve appears unlike any other version of it you've seen and the most fun part. Claymation is already a time-consuming process, but the amount of detail here must have really made this intensive. (You even get to see people's moustaches move along with their mouth movements.) There is just so much going on in the scenes, especially in the airship, which is just an impressive piece of design. The depictions of the sky are particularly beautiful. 

Admittedly, the pacing may not quite work for everyone. It's not slow, but it's got a "Charlie Brown Christmas" deliberateness to the whole thing. Also, the voice acting is decent, but there's something not quite right to it. I think it has more to do with the audio recording or the direction than the voice actors.

Younger kids may like the visuals, but the wordiness to this may go over their heads. (A lot of parts feel more like they're trying to speak to adults.) Parents that are more selective with what their children watch be forewarned that there is one brief scene that feels racially insensitive and one brief weirdly sexual part. Also, there's a reason this movie often pops up in scariest children's films lists. The Mysterious Stranger section is really dark and creepy, well told, but creepy.

I can't think of anything quite like this movie. It's the combination of the childish and mature, fun and ominous. It's too bad it didn't get better word of mouth. I recommend this.