Yeah it is hard not to notice Mickey Rooney and a bit of Andy Hardy leaks through. I don't know any movie that can capture Mark Twain total wit, The only ilk of that type are a few Shakespeare movies. This later complaint coming from stuff shirts 1939 critics. What this movie makes you want to do is read the book, which is a good thing. This movie was about 100 pages of script, the book 400. If Twain could have written it in 100 pages he would have.Why anyone thinks you can do a verbatim reproduction of a book is beyond me. Look at Gone with the Wind, or the modern book The Shining. The Shining totally fails as a movie, both releases, as the book is a more richer story. Slight spoiler for the Shining follows. The first Shining move especially because of the ending and ignoring the hotel's furnace problem which is an important thread in the book.Rex Ingram as Jim should have at least been nominated for a best supporting actor. He was the glue in the film. This is just a good classic golden age movie.

It's been so long since I've read the novel that I have to think hard about how closely the film follows the print. Not that it's so important. A movie should be judged on its own merits, I know.Yet the book, despite a major screw-up towards the end, was a model of its kind. Huckleberry Finn, like Candide, belonged in C. Northrop Frye's category of "naive hero." Huck experienced all sorts of adventures, during which he exhibited two primary traits -- he was dumb and he had no sense of humor at all.The movie preserves the second more or less intact. Mickey Rooney -- pretty good as Huck -- enjoys himself often but only very rarely does he laugh. And he doesn't play tricks on anyone. He's mostly earnest.And the movie keeps Huck naive too. For instance, when he and (N word) Jim pick up the two tramps who have been thrown off a steamboat, he believes it when they both claim the choicest meals because they are European royalty. (That's Twain's jab at European pretensions.) But the studio -- MGM, the home of "family movies" -- gives Huck an affable outgoing quality that one doesn't read into the Huckleberry Finn of print. The novel's Huck was anosognosic. He didn't know he was naive. Mickey Rooney is lively. He dashes about, picks things up quickly, and he speaks rapidly. And some of the longueurs of the novel are omitted. The pace is more lively and the events spruced up.I'll give an example. Those two vagabonds, the con men. Huck and Jim haul them onto their raft and share their space and food with them. One of the bums, after some gentle prodding, provoked by some of his own hints, reveals that he is the Duke of Bridgeport. So Huck and Jim treat him with greater deference, while the other tramp watches and grows more sullen. Finally, after a lot of brooding and thinking, the second tramp hints that he too has royalty in his background. Attention turns to him. And after a lot of nudging he admits that he is the Dauphin, the lost son of the King of France, so he outranks the first bum. Part of the humor in this absurd situation comes from the growing envy of the second tramp. The movie drops this. It squishes the two fraudulent claims together so that the tramps lie in rapid sequence.The adapter and director do this all the way through. It's not bad. It adds zap to the story. One element the writers might not have played down so carefully is the fate of Jim, which after all is the most important thing hanging in the balance. Eliminated too is Twain's tragic sense of life, as when Finn senior picks up a jug of liquor at the beginning of the novel, shakes it, and reckons that there are about three more cases of DT left in it. (That's delirium tremens, a horrifying illness.) Still, throughout both the book and this adaptation, we can sense Twain's gentle skepticism regarding humans and their adventures. Twain edited the dying U. S. Grant's memoirs when the ex-president was broke and living in the Adirondacks. The memoirs contain this sentence about Grant's youth. "In school, I was taught so often that a noun was a thing that I began to believe it." I'll bet that's Twain, not Grant. The writer himself was a curious and Byronic figure. He spent a short while in the army of the Confederacy and wound up living in a Hartford mansion next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Most novels are long enough to require considerable editing to make them fit into the usual 90 minute format that Hollywood preferred in the days of 1939. What to leave out is always a problem. Someone's favourite scene is sure to be lost, whatever the treatment writers do. Mark Twain' classic seems to have always been troublesome for Hollywood. Put in too much and someone is sure to scream "racist"; Leave out too much and someone else is going to scream "chicken"! This version strikes a rather nice balance, but of course it didn't please everyone. Personally, I feel that leaving out Tom Sawyer is all to the good. His antics always seemed farcical to me. The comedy that remains in this version is not exaggerated, but is rather subtle. The real defect is that the film proceeds smoothly for about the first two-thirds, up to the time Huck is bitten by the snake. After that, everything is rushed and choppily edited. It makes for a disappointing finish. I admit, though, that the lynch mob scene, with Jim cowering in the jail as the mob batters down the jail door is exciting. If you are unfamiliar with both novel and film, I'll let you find out how Huck saves Jim! This cast does an excellent job of presenting Mark Twain's characters. After all, MGM had probably the best stable of character actors in 1939 of all the studios. Rex Ingram stands out as "Jim", but Mickey Rooney truly was born to play "Huck". Charges that the subtle changes to Mark Twain's original, so far as the slave Jim and the attitudes toward him are portrayed, mark this film as "racist" strike me as absurd. Efforts to bar the film, sometimes even the novel, here and there, are just Political Correctness run amok. Slavery was part of American Life in the time frame of the story, and attitudes varied from region to region. This is accurately reflected in both film and novel. Jim, too, get s sympathetic treatment in both. Where's the "racism"?

This movie is perfect for the nations #1 box office star of 1939. No wonder the public adored him! Mickey Rooney simply stated is the best actor that has ever lived. Mickey gives a down to earth and lovely performance.!!! The movie is very true to the book. If you loved the book, you will love this movie. It's wonderful!!!!!! Another great movie that was perfect for Mickey Rooney was Young Tom Edison. If you love him as Huck, then check out Young Tom Edison! Another Blockbuster performance by the MASTER performer. Mickey Rooney, may you live on in the hearts of all who love you! Also for your Rooney fans check out Boy's Town and The Human Comedy. The Andy Hardy series are also terrific God Bless you, and I love you Mickey!