Tom Sawyer

A Reader's Digest production, with songs by the Sherman brothers of Disney fame, and surprisingly enjoyable. Highly professional old-style movie-making which has the wit to ditch its set piece white-picket-fenced Southern town, its inhabitants, and even Tom himself, to fill the screen with dazzling helicopter shots of the Mississippi River (complete with Howard Keel-style ballads) whenever it can. Of course there are the statutory moments of schmaltz, the Indian bogeyman, and a marked absence of blacks (in a Southern town?). Nice, if over-detailed, performance from Warren Oates as Muff Potter.