A series of country-fried, saccharine-sweet vignettes follow the growth of my hometown's own Sullivan brothers from quickly-angered little boys to grown men getting sunk on a battleship.
The film has little substance aside from being a great example of morale boasting propaganda designed to pick up a nation's spirits as the battle for the Pacific got bloodier and bloodier. The childsploitation of the nauseatingly cute brothers-as-children is the most shameless this side of John John's salute, and the tales of family togetherness and the accepting of traditional roles are so predictable that they allow no room for real character growth-or real characters, for that matter. I felt about as sad at the end of this film as I would have had it been nothing more than a shot of five cardboard cutouts being burned. The walking-on-the-clouds ending was laugh-out-loud corny and the scenes leading up to it ranged from boring to mildly amusing.
That's not to say that the picture didn't have any good points. Some scenes are genuinely amusing and, when they're not going too far overboard, those kids are genuinely cute, but still its flaws outweigh its positives.
The film has little substance aside from being a great example of morale boasting propaganda designed to pick up a nation's spirits as the battle for the Pacific got bloodier and bloodier. The childsploitation of the nauseatingly cute brothers-as-children is the most shameless this side of John John's salute, and the tales of family togetherness and the accepting of traditional roles are so predictable that they allow no room for real character growth-or real characters, for that matter. I felt about as sad at the end of this film as I would have had it been nothing more than a shot of five cardboard cutouts being burned. The walking-on-the-clouds ending was laugh-out-loud corny and the scenes leading up to it ranged from boring to mildly amusing.
That's not to say that the picture didn't have any good points. Some scenes are genuinely amusing and, when they're not going too far overboard, those kids are genuinely cute, but still its flaws outweigh its positives.