Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Thanks to minorthreat78's W/O called Guilty Pleasures I have treated myself to yet another viewing of my private guilty pleasure, the Shirley Temple vehicle, Fox Studio's Captain January. This W/O challenges us to review a product, movie, book, CD, etc., that is average or below quality but that we still have a fondness for despite its flaws. See the details on this W/O by going here: http://www.epinions.com/content_3327172740 and get in on the action yourself.

I love this film. In fact, I love all of Shirley Temple's films. There, I've said it. My guilty pleasure is out in the open. Captain January is my favorite one.

A 1936 remake of a 1923 silent based on the book by Laura E. Richards, Captain January was shot when Shirley was 8 years old. The time period in which this feel-good Depression era movie was made is the cause of many of what can be seen as flaws, but it is also responsible for a good bit of its charm.

The version I last saw was the VHS colorized version put out by 20th Century Fox as part of its Family Feature Collection. It is a short 76 minutes in duration and is of course rated "G". Any child should be alright with it except for the one scene where Shirley as the foundling, Star, gets ripped away from her beloved surrogate parent, Captain January, fisticuffs ensue and Cap gets knocked for a loop. It's a very emotional scene and really little kids might find it scary, but probably not in this day and age.

The movie tells the story of six year old Star who as an infant was rescued by a New England lighthouse keeper from a wreck at sea that claimed the lives of her parents. The lighthouse keeper, Captain January, never notified the authorities and kept the baby to raise as his own. Things have gone swimmingly for years as he brought her up with song and laughter, the Good Book and lots of love. She is a favorite among the area sailors and fishermen and beloved by all the locals. One day she is spotted cavorting with some seafaring men outside the general store by a snooty mean-spirited busy body of a truant-officer. The truant-officer decides Captain January isn't the proper parent for the child and sets the wheels in motion to have Star taken away and put in an institution. At the same time a sub-plot is taking place wherein the good captain is about to be thrown out of his lighthouse because the state is putting in new automated equipment and he will not be needed. Many laughs and tears later when all seems at its bleakest a fortunate twist of fate causes everything to turn out perfectly.

I'll tell you why this is a guilty pleasure...it's the cheese quotient. It's so processed it's practically Velveeta. This is a very typical Shirley Temple vehicle in that she's a foundling (or orphan, or foster child) for the umpteenth time. She's the plucky dimpled darling with the endearing and precocious little swagger and the pouty, chin-jutting, head-nodding delivery Americans fell in love with over and over again during the 1930s. She's up against tough odds and the good people in her corner are beset by power-maddened ol' meanies. She sings and dances and charms and her innocence somehow wins her through. To say this is formulaic is an understatement. The lines are simple, the humor is predictable and sweet, the bad guys are positively venomous and Star, well she is the Star! If ever there was an intention to manipulate an audience it was in the work done on the viewers of this movie. In the end Star's uncle who is a big-wig in the American diplomatic corps returns from abroad, enters Star's life with his supremely benevolent piles of money and with kind paternalism makes everything all better for Star and every single one of her friends. It seems a pretty picture to paint of the country's power elite at a time when nearly everyone was beset by troubles that could cast their government in a bad light. These sentimental movies were a good anti-depressant, a sort of Depression era Paxil.

Three racist lines are spoken in this film with regard to the Chinese. The lines are so ignorant that they make me cringe but so childish that they cannot be taken seriously by any modern viewer.

The colorization process that turned this from a classic black and white film into a paint-by-the-numbers color film is among the worst I've seen in this example. Only four basic hues were used to colorize this and the process did nothing to enhance the film. Everything is either a pale sort of mustard yellow, an insipid pinkish red, a murky celery green or the faded shade of blue you might see in an old cambric work shirt. The close-up scenes are colorized while the backgrounds such as an ocean vista or the town buildings appear in black and white. Everything that is colored looks like it's been colored and with a dull palette at that. They would have been better off leaving well enough alone.

So now you know about the guilty, here's the scoop on the pleasure.

You either love Shirley Temple or you hate her. I am in the love camp. This little girl was a talented, engaging scene stealer if there ever was one! She is in almost every scene of this movie and carries them all with her adorable expressive face, her oddly mature comportment, or her winning style on the boards. The kid's a wonder! As an artist she was known to never blow a line and irritated many a seasoned adult star by reminding them of theirs when they forgot. One of the great camera effects in this film required Shirley to climb a 45 foot stairway while a camera crane moved up beside her, catching the delivery of her lines each time she turned on a long spiral staircase. She had to time her line and her tapping exactly with each turn and this little pro never missed a single synchronized beat. Shirley never lets any of the real world seep into our fantasies, she makes it all seem effortless.

The rest of the cast is a cornucopia of great character actors that never let us down. Captain January is played by the venerable Guy Kibbee, a mainstay of the Warner Brothers stock companies all during the 1930s who started out in show biz entertaining on the Mississippi riverboats. His range of emotion and comic genius carries the plot forward with skill.

The comic Widow Kroft is played with subtle charm by the talented veteran Jane Darwell who appeared in several other Shirley Temple films but is perhaps better known for her stirring role as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath.

January's pal and verbal sparring partner Captain Nazru is played with characteristic emotional depth and humor by another character great, Slim Summerville.

Sara Haden, known for a myriad of roles as the town busy-body, the hatchet faced spinster, here plays the mean spirited truant-officer and pulls it off flawlessly. Only The Wizard of Oz's wicked witch/Miss Gulch played by Margaret Hamilton is a meaner character than this one.

Perhaps the best treat in this cast is a dark haired 28 year old Buddy Ebsen (TV's Jed Clampett of the Beverly Hillbillies). In his role as an unemployed fisherman named Paul, Ebsen hits the boards with liquid grace and does an unforgettable soft-shoe number with Shirley to the song At the Codfish Ball, showcasing his talent as a dancer that harks back to his earlier days in 1928 as a Ziegfield's chorus boy. The languorous, folksy way he delivers his lines here may not even be acting, but it fits the role perfectly.

The special effects in the days when this film was made weren't very sophisticated but the emotionally wrenching scene when Star has been secreted off shore in a boat to keep her from the authorities and the police boat shows up seems realistic and looks for all the world like it was actually shot at sea. It wasn't.

Four song and dance tunes are served up in this film starting with Shirley singing Early Bird in the opening moments of the show. The Right Somebody to Love is sung early in the film and reprised in a fantasy dream scene that I find to be the only stupid part of the movie, wherein Guy Kibbee playing a baby is dressed up in a bonnet and bib in an over-sized high chair, while Shirley dances, sings and mugs for the camera. Wow...Kibbee should have put his foot down on that scene. Summerville and Kibbee join with Shirley in a comic rendering of Sextet from Lucia (Lucia diLammermoor), certainly not my favorite Temple number. The performance of At the Codfish Ball is outstanding and has made this song by S. Mitchell and L. Pollack one of Shirley's best known and most beloved tunes. With lyrics like this, how could Curly Top ever miss?

"Lobsters dancing in a row
Shuffle off to Buffalo
Jellyfish sway to and fro
At the Codfish ball.

Tunas trucking left and right
Minnies mooching what a night
There won't be a hook in sight
At the Codfish Ball."

They just don't write 'em like that anymore.

The last reason and perhaps the biggest reason this is a pleasure for me to watch is the emotional kiddie coaster ride it presents. I know it's contrived but Temple, Kibbee and especially Summerville pull at my heartstrings with such unabashed and earnest tear-jerking power that I am willingly and effortlessly swept away. It worked for the audiences of the 30s and I find that it still works quite effectively for me.

So, rent the tape and in the words of my favorite Shirley ditty,
" Come along and follow me
To the bottom of the sea
We'll join in the Jamboree
At the Codfish ball."




Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8