Premise: Three orphans find a giant gold nugget and the town fights over who should take care of the kids and thus, the gold nugget.
I don't know this era of Disney super well, but two things are clear. 1) They definitely were a second-tier studio. 2) They made a lot of stuff I'd've enjoyed when I was 7. I get why The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Biscuit Eater didn't make their way into the cannon. Disney was clearly running on a quantity over quality model that actually worked pretty well in the pre-video days. Many of the 60s and 70s movies would've been barely released or straight-to-video these days. But, The Apple Dumpling Gang was pleasant and charming. There's no real reason why it couldn't've been a movie I watched dozens of times as a child to my parents' chagrin. Throwing Don Knotts and Tim Conway in is like putting Key and Peele in a movie now for supporting roles. The kids in the movie are decent movie kids. Not terribly talented but also not asked to do much. Bill Bixby and Susan Clark are charming enough leads. The movie is fun and silly without ever being exciting or funny. This is hardly a hidden gem of the Disney back catalogue, but I certainly get why a generation older than me would be fondly nostalgic about it.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment