Jasper National Park (1952) User Reviews

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[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 25 November 2023]

The TravelTalks team arrives at the train station. There is an interesting giant totem pole. Next, they head off to Jasper Park Lodge and spend some time there getting food and playing golf. There is a lot of scenery and more resorts. They do film a few glaciers and that's probably the most compelling part. I doubt they exist now or if they do, they ain't as massive.

Basically, this is TravelTalks on vacation or maybe doing work for the tourist bureau. I could excuse it if this is the war years. It's the 50's. There is no need to stay so close to home. One would hope for somewhere more exotic.

"There's a lot of snow up there in Canada . . . "

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 21 December 2019]

. . . essentially captures all of the meaning to be derived from JASPER NATIONAL PARK's verbose narration. The garrulously gushing voiceover guy does not offer the sort of pronouncements, pontificating, judgments and condemnations here for which he's so infamous while traipsing across India or Mexico. Common Sense tells us that if we see billowing clouds of smoke, surely fire cannot be too far away. However, JASPER NATIONAL PARK features a bloviating bozo apparently wearing blinders, as he's totally oblivious in the face of looming danger. As he enumerates the length and width of the numerous glaciers being hoarded by Canadian miscreants, it seems like the question of WHERE all this snow and ice winds up when it inevitablY melts NEVER crosses the bloated buffoon's mind. WHERE are the dams, holding ponds and diversion channels required to keep Canada's problem in Canada? JASPER NATIONAL PARK never addresses this issue. Today, meteorologists predict the Great Lakes will overflow during 2020 by record amounts, mostly due to the Canadian meltdown. Michigan may lose half its land mass to liquifying Canadian glaciers! Thanks to the cover-ups of propaganda puff pieces such as JASPER NATIONAL PARK, America is totally unprepared for this preventable catastrophe (and the trouble of billing "donor states" such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas for the cost of jacking up Michigan on stilts!).

TravelTalks

[Michael_Elliott · 20 October 2009]

Jasper National Park (1952)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Colorful entry in MGM's TravelTalks short has James A. FitzPatrick once again visiting a beautiful place and telling us of its history. The majority of the short consists of showing us all the beauty there is to be seen in various lodges, golf courses and of naturally the nature. We get to see a family of black bears being fed and we end the film with a trip over the Angel Glacier. One should know what to expect from a series like this and the entry here is pretty good as we get the normal good narration mixed in with some beautiful scenes. The stuff on the glaciers is certainly the highlight but one wishes the print shown on TCM was in a little better shape so that the images would really jump off the screen. It was somewhat fun seeing the older styled golf course and the bear sequence includes a rather funny, if dumb, joke.

Fitzpatrick Plays Golf

[boblipton · 5/10 · 25 November 2023]

James A. Fitzpatrick not only sends the Technicolor cameras to Jasper National Park, with Howard P. Nelson to run them. He goes himself. Just as the Traveltalks about Scotland were an excuse for Fitzpatrick to tee of at St. Andrews, there's a golf course or nine at this Park. Perhaps Fitzpatrick is referring to himself when he mentions that some of the worst golfers in the world have played this particular course.

After eighteen years of producing and narrating these travelogues for MGM, Fitzpatrick sounds a lot more relaxed than his earlier essays, although he still despises a short word when a long one will do. There are bears and glaciers, rivers and, astoundingly, room service.

The copy of this movie that plays on Turner Classic Movies is a bit fuzzy and the color elements a bit muddled.