jfgibson73
I wanted to watch this movie because I had read that Walt Disney had said it reminded him of his childhood. One of my favorite parts of the the Disney World Resort is Main Street U.S.A., and I also read that this movie had some connection to what they tried to create in the park. The story is about a widower who moves from Boston to a small rural town with her three children. They fix up a big yellow house and adapt to country life. My family enjoys Little House on the Prarie and Pollyana, and we thought this would be along those lines. As we watched Summer Magic, we became increasingly mystified. Rather than progressing through a linear narrative, this movie piles on things that make no sense into a larger and larger pile, like a misshapen heap of gunney sacks. Most of the songs were terrible and poorly placed. None of them added to the story. There were moments when it felt like the movie might work, and some sequences were enjoyable as separate vignettes, but we ended up turning it off before it was finished. I watched the rest of it myself later and didn't care about any of it. I would have liked a better story and characters I could care about.
Leofwine_draca
SUMMER MAGIC is a sickly sweet Disney vehicle designed around blonde starlet Hayley Mills, fresh from the success of THE PARENT TRAP. The plot sees three spoilt city kids moving to the countryside, where they must adapt to rural life.This is twee indeed and the heartwarming messages certainly weren't appreciated by this viewer! Indeed, Disney is so fond of thrusting 'life lessons' down the throats of its child audience that I generally avoid their movies like the plague. Still, it could be much worse: SUMMER MAGIC is colourful, has some funny scenes, a lovable animal, and Mills actually displays some traces of acting talent here and there. However, by far the best thing about the movie is Burl Ives, a larger-than-life actor playing a larger-than-life character, and his rendition of the 'Ugly Bug Ball' is a real hoot.
James Hitchcock
The decade that brought us the First World War may seem an odd subject for nostalgia, but "Summer Magic", like "On Moonlight Bay" from a few years earlier, is a film which tries to persuade us that, whatever may have been happening on the battlefields of Europe, the 1910s (or the "Ragtime Era" as many Americans called them) really were the time of a kinder, gentler America. (It is, apparently, a remake of a 1938 film called "Mother Carey's Chickens", which I have never seen). Margaret Carey, a recently widowed mother from Boston, is forced to move out of the family home when she discovers that her late husband was the victim of a fraudulent investment scheme. She and her three children, Nancy, Gilly and Peter, relocate to the small town of Beulah, Maine, where they rent a large yellow house. (Gilly- pronounced with a hard "G"- is a boy, not a girl. The name is presumably short for Gilbert, but this is never actually made clear). There are two main plot lines. The first revolves around the family's friendship with Ossian ("Osh") Popham, the agent for their rather mysterious landlord Mr Hamilton. The kindly Osh is more than just a letting agent; he is also the town's storekeeper and general odd-job- man. The second plot line deals with the visit of the Careys' spoilt, snobbish cousin Julia and the mutual dislike which grows up between her and Nancy, especially when they fall for the same man. This was the fourth of six films which Hayley Mills made for Walt Disney Productions. Hayley was, of course, originally from England, but during this period of her career was most often cast (as here) as an American, even though she had trouble managing a convincing American accent. (Here she attempts to sound more American by shortening the long "a" vowels, but this only makes her sound closer to Boston, Lincolnshire than to Boston, Massachusetts). This did not, however, affect her popularity, and she became possibly the most popular teenage star of the sixties. In Britain she tended to be cast in more serious roles ("Tiger Bay", "Whistle Down the Wind", "The Chalk Garden"), but most of her American films were comedies, of which this is a good example. It is also a good example of just what made Hayley so popular in her day- her wonderful liveliness and vivaciousness, combined with a gift for conveying sweetness and innocence. By 1963, when she would have been seventeen, she performed a sort of dual role for Disney. To the older generation she was the daughter they wished they had. To boys, she was the girlfriend they wished they had, a sex symbol in the nicest possible way. Dorothy McGuire, looking much younger than her 47 years, is good as Margaret, as is Deborah Walley as the insufferable Julia. The other performance which stands out, however, is from Burl Ives as the warm- hearted, if occasionally devious, Osh. Ives had originally made his name as a folk-singer, but later became a successful actor, both on Broadway and in the cinema. I had previously associated him with serious dramas such as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "The Big Country", but here he shows that he could do light comedy as well. The film is also a musical with several songs, although none of them rally stand out apart from "The Ugly Bug Ball", which was a favourite of mine as a child. (I had no idea at the time that it was from a film). The plot at times becomes a bit hard to follow, especially the various machinations involving Osh and Mr Hamilton, and the ending seems a bit too abrupt. Overall, however, the film's cheerful atmosphere and the contributions of Mills and Ives make this a watchable example of warm- hearted Disney family entertainment. 7/10
Levin Tull
This 1963 Disney film is a delight. Hayley Mills is a delightful girl with a charming personality. This story of the downturn in family circumstances and a fanciful letter turn a lost mansion in Boston to a delightful home in rural Maine.Burl Ives is marvelous as a small town store proprietor, and his stores and singing enliven the film.Dorothy McGuire is wonderful as the mom, and the other characters fit in well.The visit of Aunt Julia, who is not well-liked by the children, turns into an opportunity for mischief.This is an old-fashioned family film. It is not suitable for jaded sophisticates.
