Donovan's Reef (1963)

Why so much hype?

Thanks for the memories!

Fantastic!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This movie is a lot of fun to watch, the scenery is great, the singing lovely, the people beautiful, the characters interesting and the performances are very good too. My major problem with this movie is the casting of the two youngest children of 'the Doc' and Manulani - Sarah and Luki were in no way children of the Doc and Manulani - Leilani looked the part and played it well but Sarah and Luki each had at least one Chinese parent. They could not have had an Hawaiian mother and a Caucasian father. The visual clash really interfered with their being presented as Leilani's siblings. The two child actors did well - but couldn't overcome their appearance. Trying to pass them off as half Hawaiian and half Caucasian was really an insult to them and their own heritage. My other problem with it was the spanking scene - I know, those kinds of scenes were in several movies of that time period but even then I found the 'it's okay to spank a woman to get her to behave the way you (the man) want her to behave' was objectionable. Other than those two issues .. an entertaining movie.

I got myself a copy of this on DVD for Christmas. It's one of my favorite John Wayne movies, right up there with "The Quiet Man" and "The High and the Mighty". Jimmy Buffett would feel right at home hanging out with these characters! The anti-racist and anti-prejudging themes are nicely slipped in without being hammered at; there are scenes, such as the Christmas program, which manage to be at once touching and hilarious; there's all that drop-dead-gorgeous tropical scenery to look at (a definite plus when you're enduring a Wisconsin winter or the equivalent!); and of course there's that ongoing brawl... "Donovan's Reef" may not be a classic as some film buffs define the term, but it's a very likable movie and a whole lot of fun!

Wonderful fun this movie but the miscasting is incredible!Wayne looks more like a grand-dad than an uncle to the kids.Lee Marvin steals the film with his superb cameo.Miss Allen is awfully mismatched with Wayne.In fact even Warden who played her father was many years Wayne's junior.Had he made this film 10 years earlier it might have been more plausible with the usual Maureen O'Hara.The story line is apt as well as the script.As usual Mr.Ford uses nature to good effect.A good roll-licking film for the die-hard Ford fans but no more than an escapist farewell to once an heroic star.John Ford probably was not aware of the tremendous changes there were going on.A younger,fresher actor to pair with Marvin would have done more justice.But in his lifetime there was only one man this director had in mind.John Wayne!

Having not seen "The Wings Of Eagles", I cannot say that "Donovan's Reef", the last collaboration between director John Ford and star John Wayne, was also their least. But "Eagles" would have to be remarkably bad to beat this."Guns" Donovan (Wayne) lives on a faraway island in French Polynesia which he helped liberate from Japanese occupation in World War II along with buddies "Boats" Gilhooley (Lee Marvin) and "Doc" Dedham (Jack Warden). Trouble comes in the form of Dedham's long-estranged daughter Ameilia (Elizabeth Allen), who travels from Boston to prove her father is not of fit moral character to own a piece of his family's fortune. Donovan hides Dedham's three native offspring by pretending they are his, to buy time while winning Ameilia over to the ways of the island and her father.There, I just spent more time on the plot of "Donovan's Reef" than the movie itself does! "Donovan's Reef" is a rambling mess, perhaps an attempt to grab all the comic relief bits from Ford's more serious films and build an entire movie around them. Either that or an excuse for Ford to throw himself a party in the Pacific. Beyond the arrival of Ameilia, nothing happens during the film's two-hour running time. Gilhooley and Donovan smash up the latter's bar, Donovan's Reef, while Gilhooley is chased by aging barfly Miss Lafleur (Dorothy Lamour). Christmas is celebrated in a rainy church. The French governor of the island (Cesare Romero) makes eyes for Ameilia.William H. Clothier fills the screen with some remarkable Hawaiian landscapes, and Allen gives her part, "Miss Bunker Hill" as Donovan calls her, more than it deserves. She also gives Wayne someone to play off of that rouses his better moments in this film, something that can't be said of any other member of the cast, including Marvin, who after a big build-up retreats to the background and acts drunk. Maybe he WAS drunk; it's that kind of film.Warden plays his part way too straight and Marcel Dalio as a French priest plays his way too broad. One of these guys is in the wrong picture; I think it's Warden. Ford plays everything too broad, with annoyingly repetitive musical cues and endless ceremonies. The island seems a haven for Ford's cinematic tics and idiosyncrasies. People don't walk anywhere, they file in tight parade, two by two. They also burst into sudden song, the same dreary number complete with arms waving in unison and invisible instrumental accompaniment. When Ameilia swims onto an empty beach in a revealing bathing suit, an unidentified character runs into the frame, throws her a towel, and runs out.What really annoys me is the script by James Edward Grant. We are asked to side against Ameilia because she took badly to her father's abandonment and because she is stuck up. Yet as soon as she's on the island, she's being abused by Donovan, doused in the ocean and then dragged across a beach. Grant liked his women being spanked and thrown out of windows, but here he really shoves your face in that, along with icky cute scenes featuring the Dedham offspring.If not for Allen and Clothier, "Donovan's Reef" would be much worse than it is. As it is, it's pretty bad, showing even the best of movie partnerships needed the right help to make something for the ages.