Just watched this for the first time ever last night. My daughter is in singing lessons & she's learning "Lavender Blue"--this film apparently made it famous--so the teacher let us borrow this on VHS (yes, we still have a VCR!) So we all sat down as a family to watch this for family night. Wow, they don't make films like this anymore. Yes, it's a bit simple and it's definitely aimed mostly at kids... but it has a message that just isn't put into films these days.
Beulah Bondi (Ma Bailey in "It's A Wonderful Life") plays the classic movie Granny: A harsh, God-fearing, no-nonsense frontier woman. Won't accept charity, won't "spend money she don't have", tries to keep the kids imaginations from getting away from them. Burl Ives (who I only knew as the voice of the snowman in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer") is also in this as the adult (an uncle, I believe) who is sympathetic to the kids and tries to help them soften up ol' Granny.
Some differences I noticed between this movie (made years ago by Disney & aimed at kids), and they type of stuff Disney Channel would show (aimed at kids) nowadays: 1) The adults weren't stupid. Yes, Granny was kind of "the villain", meaning she tried to keep the kids imaginations from running away with them, keeping them grounded in frontier reality, stuff like that. But there were also moments where she showed she could have fun, and be soft. She was definitely no idiot. 2) The kids weren't the smartest people in the room (or smart-alecks). It was their imagination and childlike innocence & determination that won out, even while they learned lessons about responsibility and selfishness. But they learned some hard lessons, especially the boy, much of which came after introspection. In the scene I referred to earlier... the boy is upset when his lamb goes missing in the woods during a storm and Granny says she doesn't think he's actually worried about the lamb, but more so because he wants to win the ribbon & cash prize at the fair. Then, to his credit, he apparently realizes this is true and his attitude changes. It just isn't the kind of thing that's done very much anymore. It was really refreshing to see.
A couple of things I found surprisingly humorous: Watching two kids under age 8 or 9 traipse through the woods, swamps, countryside, etc. on their own without adult supervision... kids talking mean to each other (& even getting into a shoving match) in front of adults without the adults intervening... it really highlighted how much things have changed.
This one's worth a look.
Shout by r96skBlockedParent2021-05-15T21:41:17Z
Not far off being a good film, in my opinion.
'So Dear to My Heart' does do bits well, there are a few amusing moments and some sweet ones. The cast are pleasant enough, if nothing standout. A couple of parts are a little slow, while it has the usual animal questionability to it that a lot of films tend to have from this era.
All in all, an alright watch but one that's just short of being something I'd recommend. It's nothing bad, I will say that.
/copied directly from my Letterboxd review\