Those Calloways

Those Calloways

Those Calloways

A great cast and a wistful mood makes this Disney film an absolute must for nature fans. If it's not the sight of tons of geese flying overhead trying to avoid becoming victims of Ed Wynn's gravy, it's the bear hibernating in the basement of Brian Keith and Vera Miles being chased around by Miles with a broom (several times!) to get away from their garbage. They've protected this bear since it was a cub so naturally it doesn't want to go anywhere else. Their teen son, Brandon de Wilde, has been helping pop Keith get furs so they can pay off debts to Parley Baer, and while they definitely had a need for these furs, I was sad to see the remains of foxes and rabbits for people to wear. Miles breaks down in tears when she gets a rabbit stole for Christmas. A young Linda Evans is de Wilde's love interest, and Walter Brennan is a bighearted elder townsperson, along with veteran actors Philip Abbott and John Qualen. The photography is glorious, with its mainly fall colors looking like an old Currier and Ives painting, or an old jigsaw puzzle box cover. Pleasant for the whole family yet not so cloying in a childlike innocence that adults can enjoy the more mature themes. Out of nowhere, Keith seems to have a drinking problem. Solid performances all round with Keith and Miles excellent. She really reminded me of Ma Ingalls from the later "Little House on the Prairie" TV series. Just a simple story of real people with genuine problems, although the weather is far too perfect all the time to be truly believable.

I love this movie for it's simplicity and visuals. A simple movie that doesn't have to shock or scare. I have watch this movie many times and the music is wonderful. All in all a movie worth watching.

Bland. It's a film that slowly creeps through its 131 minute runtime. I do really like Brian Keith as an actor, but he really did get the more lamer Disney films didn't he? 'The Parent Trap' aside, all of his others with the studio up until this point are marginally good at best; despite Keith's talent. 'Those Calloways' is poorly paced and doesn't have any truly lovable characters. The shtick with the main family is that they are opposed to hunting, yet their whole thing is hunting in itself. Sure, they're doing it for differing reasons, but it's hardly a massive gap - it's not like the film portrays them as disliking it either. As for the cast, Keith is the best on display as Cam. Brandon deWilde (Bucky), Ed Wynn (Ed) and Walter Brennan (Alf) are fine. All of the antagonists are forgettable, though. Considering how long the film goes on for, they hardly do anything with the exception of one moment. There's a few scenes which could've done with some music too, particularly ones involving Bucky and Whit (Tom Skerritt). There is definitely a good message attempted, but it kinda falls flat unfortunately. This isn't one I'd recommend, even if it isn't terrible.

I love these simple films from the 60s and 70s of Disney, at first that cute message about mistreatment and extermination of animals and peoples, but here we have a beautiful example of love and care for nature and wild animals, beautiful film, delicate and lovely, except for the money hunts and clothing skins... So beautiful, he "sacrifices" his own family for the sake of geese, a pity he just doesn't care about the animals they kill to get their skin off, but like every Disney movie does all right in the end... It's so long, but so engaging that we don't realize...

Those Calloways is a family film from the Walt Disney Studios about a man who was raised by the Indians in rural Vermont and as such has an appreciation for nature that his fellow whites fail to see. As this film is set in the early years of the last century, Brian Keith's character would have an ally in the White House who would be making conservation a prime policy initiative in his presidency. Theodore Roosevelt would have appreciated Cam Calloway's concern for the wild geese who pass over his part of Vermont going south for the winter. Their passage is something noted and revered by the Indians who helped raise Keith. But his concern for the geese is not something that his family, wife Vera Miles and son Brandon DeWilde, share with the same enthusiasm. But if Miles and DeWilde are not on the same page as Keith, the rest of the town just ain't even reading the same book. The only real ally that Keith has is storekeeper Walter Brennan. A fast talking salesman played by Phillip Abbott wants to turn their little corner of Vermont into a duckhunter's paradise that might make the town some real money. Naturally they're resentful of Keith who is seeming to take the bread out of their mouths. Those Calloways has a good cast and a sincere message about conservation. It's not delivered however in the best fashion and the audience never really gets it, why Brian Keith is so passionate about those geese. It's not one of the Disney Studio's better efforts.

My friend and I watched this movie, a favorite of hers, which I had never viewed, and we both liked it. I always like Brian Keith in every movie he was in whether that was action, rough-and-tumble, as well as fatherly roles like "Family Affairs", maybe especially "Hard Castle and McCormick," which I loved even though it didn't last long as a series. I realize, now, how critical the Nielson Ratings and the deep pockets of one's sponsor truly are. Keith is so in character, I worried at one point where he broke his leg in the story, whether he was still doing his own stunt work at age 44. I certainly hope not. Vera Miles sans makeup, hair in a bun, acted like a woman used to roughing it as a wife, mom and woman - not always liking that reality, but continually re-accepting it as part and parcel of her love for Cam. The movie does a good job of demonstrating that both life and love come at a price, but that the risk of seeking what you really want in life is worth the cost. Even the dog, the blackbird and the bear had their own wranglers in this local-color flick. I liked the idea of being totally invested in a dream, in idealism, in fervent values, to point where you would stake everything, life itself, to make that dream actually happen - even against overwhelming odds, formidable, moneyed interests, calloused and remorseless antagonists. The Canadian geese stole every scene they were in. Pythagoras would revere their straight lines of flight, each new group parallel to the flight above them. The movie made me think of a saying on the back of a T shirt I observed today at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure for Cancel in Kalamazoo, something Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "What lies behind us and what lies before us are not as important as what lies within us." Tremendous cast: Brandon De Wilde, Vera Miles, Ed Wynn, and Brian Keith as well as Tom Skerritt at age 31. He looks like a young kid. The movie looks and sounds exactly like what it truly is - a Disney film from 1965, where music telegraphs every upcoming dramatic moment, and violence, blood and gore and so forth are not shown. At the same time, in our age of IRS corruption and interminable political partisanship, it is heart-warming to see two people renew their love for and commitment to each other, again and again, knowing that, as Langston Hughes wrote, "Life ain't been no crystal staircase." Such a total lack of pretense in this movie! That sort of pure, ingenuous sincerity, is rare in the world of film and in life where deep concerns for profit, market share, pragmatism, and the every-man-and-woman-for-himself-and-herself world many adopt, crushes out the little important things in life like tenderness, patience, and honesty. Many of the scenes in this movie have the look of a filmed stage play, and I say that in a complimentary way. If our local Civic Theatre cast and acted out this dramatic vehicle, it would be tantamount to furnishing audiences with a far more innocent age, a more pure one where people say exactly what they mean and where people mean exactly what they say, even the villains. I yearn for such unaffected directness.

Do-gooder piece from the Disney Studios, based on the novel "Swiftwater", has a farm family in Vermont at odds with the rest of the town over their attempts to save a flock of geese from game-hunters. Mixes elements of folksy adventure, family melodrama, teen romance, and nature asides but has too little humor. Runs 2 hours-plus, and that's around 30 minutes too much. Beautiful scenery and a good cast (including Brian Keith as the quietly charming head of the house, Vera Miles as his frontier wife, Brandon de Wilde--pulling a James MacArthur--and lovely Linda Evans as the sweethearts), but it's just too lethargic to appeal to kids. For nostalgic adults, an OK outdoor yarn which wears "values" on its sleeve. **1/2 from ****

If you follow the plot of the movie, you would understand that Brian Keith's character was raised by Mi'kmaq indians. It was explained in the opening that part of the Mi'kmaq totem was the wild goose (not factual, but none the less) which makes Cam's reluctance to kill wild geese understandable. Of course, the Mi'kmaq would have been hunters and trappers so killing wild animals for their fur would also be understandable.