Delayed Reaction: The Yearling

Premise: A boy adopts a young deer that causes problems.

 

I don’t know what The Yearling’s reputation in pop culture history is. I recognized the title. I know it’s a running joke in an episode of Gilmore Girls. Was this an Old Yeller though? Did this ruin a generation of children? Does this hold some pure place in film history as a gentle coming-of-age story? I ask this because I don’t know how controversial it is to say what I’m about to about this movie: The Yearling is a terrible movie.

 

It’s not offensively terrible. It’s not calling me an idiot. It doesn’t have aspects that are bigoted now. No, it’s simply bad. I didn’t enjoy watching any second of it. It felt twice as long as it was. Every time a character started talking, I wanted them to shut their mouths. I felt no positive emotions toward this movie. It’s bad. It’s not good. I want a refund of any kind.

 

Since this is a flat out pan, I’m not going to be thoughtful in my examination of it. I’ve already upset anyone who holds this movie dear. Let’s see…

 

·         Every time they called each other “Ma”, “Pa”, or “Boy” I wanted to punch them in the face.

·         Claude Jarman Jr. is a profoundly bad child actor. You know how Americans will start yelling at a person who doesn’t speak English, like that’s supposed to make them understand? Jarman seems to do the same thing here. Any time he’s given direction, he just does the same thing badly, but louder.

·         The score of this movie is punishing in both its intrusiveness and intention. It sounded like they stole it from a biblical epic and arbitrarily attached it to these mundane scenes.

·         I wanted the yearling to die. It took an hour for this thing to show up, which is as inexcusable as making this over 2 hours total. It immediately is nothing but trouble. By the time the movie was ready for the deer to die, I was tired enough and petty enough to root for that, just for the film to end.

No one even needs to watch this movie. I thoroughly regret not updating my Netflix DVD queue in time to see anything else.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend