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Dondi

1961

2.5/5

Apparently this movie is in a book called "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time," but having watched many other movies based on comic strips, I hardly think it deserves to be in that list. I mean, it's far better than the atrocious "Hillbilly Blitzkrieg," that's for sure.

Now, that's not to say that it's a great movie, but it has a certain charm to it. The kid who plays Dondi is pretty cute, and though his speech pattern is a bit odd, it is true to the comic strip. Dondi in the source material never learned to speak very good English. The Beetle Bailey-esque escapades in the barracks are pretty fun to watch, and the fish out of water parts when Dondi gets to America aren't horrible.

I guess the main problem with the movie is that it never really knows what kind of movie it wants to be. At times it wants to be a lighthearted family drama, and at others a slapstick comedy, and the shift in tone is kind of jarring at points. There's also the awful treatment of the female characters in the movie, if one can call them characters and not objects. It's more than uncomfortable to watch the colonel eat dinner with a subordinate in order to woo her, as she leads him on. I mean, having Dealey the womanizer in the movie is fine, because we find out that it's just a front and he does have a good heart after all. Having several Dealeys, and having one of them be the colonel, just gets really old fast, especially when none of them have a character arc.

So, yeah, while it's certainly not one of the best, it's definitely not one of the worst. I didn't hate it. It wasn't painful to watch. That's more praise than I can give a lot of movies based on comic strips.