Okay, I finally made it through the comments of hundreds of my fellow contributors, the vast majority of whom thoroughly disliked this film, blasting it and saying it deserved to be on the bottom 100 worst films of all time. I disagree.
I agree that it isn't the best film in the world, but I've seen so many which were so much much worse, on so many different levels.
I could see what it was that the director and the producers were aiming for.. and they came so very very close... unfortunately, because they came close in almost everything, they didn't have anything that turned out very good. And this, I'm sure, is the reason so many people don't like it and don't think it has any redeeming qualities.. because nothing was done excellently.
In my opinion, John Wayne's first thirty or so films are all worse and less entertaining than this. But, you don't get to see them very often nowadays, so people who haven't seen them don't realize just how bad, in comparison to today's special effects, they were.
Sure, the acting was less than stellar, which would be surprising from an all-star cast of adults. And so many people try to compare this flick to Baby's Day Out and Look Who's Talking... but in this flick, unlike those others... the main characters are the children, not the adults, so it only makes sense to have all the adult actors tone down their performances... and since it's so hard to get toddlers to do anything on cue, the adults needed to tone down their performances just that much more.
It was a very ingenious concept, that unfortunately was much less well received by it's overly picky audience.
Sure, there were some less-than-stellar special effects, too. So many of my fellow contributors cued in on the fact that the kids' lips weren't properly synching to the dialog, but not many noticed that in the vast majority of those shots, the babies' lips and facial expressions were computer generated... so, apparently that effect pulled itself off adequately.. just not superbly, or there would not have been the synching problems.
If you're the kind of person who can enjoy a story without having to base your enjoyment on stellar performances, you'll be able to enjoy this flick, too.
