Sadly Over-hyped

Pretty Good

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

They just don't make them like this anymore. I really liked this old movie. A movie of love and loss and moving on. The setting is great a place in the mountains. Wonderful main characters and supporting characters that make up the quirky country folk. This movie tugs at your heart strings. Wonderful performances by Jeanette MacDonald, Percy Kilbride and Claude Jarman Jr, not to mention Lassie! I wish there were more wholesome films like this. These old movies stand on their own without digitalized effects and profanity so common to new Hollywood. Jeanette MacDonald had such a beautiful voice. Give me non-enhanced sentimental movies any day! Put on your pjs and grab the popcorn and Kleenex this is a great movie for a rainy day when you don't want over the top action.

I am often fond of the Turner Classic Movies even when they contain out-dated mores and occasional slights to my feminist sensibilities. This is typically because the story lines, the character development, or the acting is strong enough to compensate for a bit of backward thinking here and there. But this film manages to smash its thick, worthless message at you, over and over in every line, scene, and plot point. "Women should be at home caring for a child or they have no meaning in this world, and while you're at it, be sure to be a good home-grown, rural, backward idiot." I couldn't be bothered to stay for the last 15 minutes of this entirely predictable - from minute one - loathsome, uninspired, piece of garbage from a hopefully dead value system.

Though she didn't intend The Sun Comes Up to be her final film, it turned out that way for Jeanette MacDonald. In this movie she plays, what else, a concert singer who is a war widow. After a few years of devoting herself to raising her only son, Dwayne Hickman, MacDonald is encouraged by her manager Lewis Stone to go back to the concert stage. She goes back and becomes a great success in her comeback. But after the concert she sees her son run down by a truck as he was trying to save their collie Lassie from the same fate. That just about destroys her and who could blame her for wanting to get away from it all. She rents an unused house deep in the Appalachians in North Carolina that's owned by Lloyd Nolan. She and Lassie go to live there and get involved with a group of kids from the county orphanage. Especially one young man, Claude Jarman, Jr., who reminds her of her late son.Jeanette gets some good opera and concert material to sing, items that were staples in her real concerts. The highlights for me are Un Bel Di from Madame Butterfly and Romance. And she gets her most cooperative co-star ever in Lassie. The beloved collie pulls off quite a rescue in the climax, but didn't steal any scenes from Jeanette MacDonald.She never planned that The Sun Comes Up would be her last film. She had a lot of ambitions to return to the screen. During the Fifties she did The King and I in summer stock and hoped to be cast in the film adaption as Anna Leonowens. I think the part would have suited her perfectly and she wouldn't have to have been dubbed as Deborah Kerr was.And one part she really wanted was as the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music. She loved the song Climb Every Mountain. But by the time the film version of Sound of Music was being cast, Jeanette's health was failing.Still The Sun Comes Up is a fine family film and a fitting end for a screen legend.

This is a movie that may be a bit corny by modern measure but a wonderful film to sit down with a young child and watch. Old time values--a slice of life with real problems---a happy ending.