Any adaptation that features Aunt Clara alive and well--even though she looks like death--signals trouble from the start. This made-for-T.V. fiasco blundered its way through the entire film. The crowning achievement must have been when the brain trust decided that Steinbeck must have simply omitted giving Curley's wife a name. When Curley called her "Mae" I just about gagged. Sad. Not to mention that Robert Blake and Randy Quaid must not have been allowed to read the novel beforehand. I'm not sure I have anything good to say about this. Pathetic is the only thing close to a compliment I can come up with. It isn't very often that I feel compelled to sign up for an account just so I can comment on a film. There is one positive I can list: this film is such a departure from the novel that when my students wrote a comparison paper dealing with similarities and differences between the different versions we read and/or saw, this version was the easiest for them to use. Why? The filmmakers had to have been trying to make this film the worst piece of cinematic crap ever before created. Move over Ed Wood, you've got company.
Review of Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men
(1981 TV Movie)
George and Lennie take a job bucking barley after fleeing Weed. Lennie gets into trouble and George has to quickly decide what to do.
14 March 2008
Warning: Spoilers