Touches You

Load of rubbish!!

hyped garbage

Good concept, poorly executed.

It gets high marks because of Joel McCrea right off. Then, it is a Western and there is always so much to learn about the early wild days and how towns got started along with laws, rules, regulations and all the rest. I always notice how the buildings of these start-up towns were built one right next to another. One fire takes them all out. I wonder how many times a town was actually re-built from fire losses? Notice too the streets and roads. Good community flick with everyone knowing everyone else and helping each other too. What an interesting way to live and grow up in. You got characters both good and not so good, the Klan, greed, fever, love interest, and a nice, happy ending. Such clean, fun and wholesome entertainment. Even if it is not true to life it can be and restores faith in human-kind just by watching. Warm and fuzzies will visit with you guaranteed. Narrator does an excellent job helping us to get the flick and not work too hard. Pay attention to Uncle Famous and his attitude on life. He lives simply, has all he needs, bothers no one likes everybody and is thankful just to be here. What a role model if there ever was one. This movie shows you what life can be like if we just let it. Good sandwich movie and tasty drink with a snack to follow will keep you happy and content to the satisfying end

An almost plot less piece of Americana and one of Jacques Tourneur's very finest films, "Stars in My Crown" is set in a small American town in the aftermath of the Civil War and it follows the daily happenings in the lives of the townsfolk, principle of whom is Joel McCrea's parson, (it's a wonderful performance). Then there's the parson's wife, the young doctor, the school mistress and the boy, (Dean Stockwell), who as a man, (an unseen Marshall Thompson), narrates the film. They are all beautifully played as are Ed Begley's greedy storekeeper, Juano Hernandez's dirt farmer and Charles Kemper's magician.It's a very simple piece, a series of scenes on which there hangs the thinest thread of a plot, in feeling and in structure not dissimilar to John Ford's "The Sun Shines Bright". It's also one of the few really good 'religious' pictures yet one in which religion isn't centre stage but something that's just there infusing every scene and it's not at all sentimental yet ultimately it's very moving. It's cult status is thoroughly justified.

I would so love to give this movie a much higher rating. I really wanted to like it. I didn't dislike it. I just didn't love it. In some ways, this movie is a poor man's 'To Kill a Mockingbird', although it predates that movie by more than a decade. Unfortunately, this movie fails to create any tension even in those scenes which are clearly meant to do so. It also fails to get us to invest into the life of these characters or feel any emotion towards them. They're nice enough people, I just didn't come to really care about them or what happened to them. Perhaps, the short running time is to blame. It just wasn't enough to fully develop the characters and draw us into their lives. This certainly isn't a bad movie.It isn't a boring movie. It's just a disappointing one.

Seeing the names of Joel McCrea and the director Jacques Tourneur(together they made the excellent "Wichita"), I thought this would be a western. As a matter of fact there is one western scene where the parson (Joel McCRea) draws his two guns when they don't want to hear his sermon at the saloon. But mostly the film follows the style of those made for the whole family to see at a Sunday matinée. It is not that there is no sadness. Some people die from an epidemic fever, there is even an attack from a white hooded clan. But the conflicts are solved too fast to be really believable, in a hurry to give a positive feeling. But apart from that, this is a pleasant film to see, among its qualities a certain Mark Twain touch and the beautiful smile of Ellen Drew.