Huckleberry Finn

With the facsimile b/w minstrels crooning 'Huckle-berry, Huckle-berry, where you bin?' and Roberta Flack 'performing' (so the credits say) the title song, you get the tenor of this Reader's Digest musical adaptation. The lying and deception that run through Twain's original become incidental rather than thematic, and much of the sense of sheer adventure gets lost. Instead, Huck's adventures with runaway slave Jim remain amiable and episodic rather than memorable and integrated. Everyone 'performs' larger than life, singing their forgettable songs rather badly. Laszlo Kovacs' camerawork, consistently several notches above the rest of the production, remains its only distinctive feature.