Johnny Tremain1957

“…For we must fight this war, in meeting houses and Congress and the halls of Parliament, as well as on the field! But what it's all about, you'll really never know. And yet it—it— it's so much simpler than any of you think. We give all we have. We fight! We die, for a simple thing. Only that a man could stand.” We start this semiquincentennial Fourth of July with a movie I watched when I was young. A Disney film based on a novel that I also read as a child. Assuredly the novel is better as I recall it being more focused on the characters while this really only cares about everything as it relates to the Revolutionary War. Indeed what does Johnny Tremain or any of the other people care about besides liberty and freedom? Johnny himself seems to care little when he is unable to continue in the trade he was naturally gifted toward and learned his whole life up to that point.  Despite being under an hour and a half it does feel unnaturally slow especially coming up to the latter half. It just seems to lose steam or focus. There are a few bright moments like the speech from James Otis. It’s not the worst or most boring films I’ve ever seen but it doesn’t really seem interested in its own story.  But as a way to give a broad understanding to younger people some of the key moments of the early Revolutionary period I think this does a decent job. It definitely can’t hold a candle to other Disney films but I can still see myself throwing it on at a July Fourth in the future if for no other sake than simple nostalgia.