AmateurMovieReviews.com

Most people remember Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird as a required novel from their literature classes in school. Those wanting to take a shortcut to finishing the assignment might have been tempted to forego the book in favor of the 1962 screen adaptation starring Gregory Peck. I was always a big reader myself, so I never shirked my responsibilities when it came to my lit classes. As a result, I never got around to watching To Kill a Mockingbird until today.

Peck plays Atticus Finch, an Alabama attorney who is a progressive thinker at a time when racism was overt and rampant in the deep south. He is a widower and is raising his two children -- son Jem and daughter Scout -- with the help of his housekeeper Calpurnia. One major storyline of the film deals with a major case that Atticus is assigned and a second major storyline deals with childhood memories of Scout as she plays with Jem and their friend Dill, a character based on author Truman Capote, who was a friend of Lee's when they were children. Both storylines are interesting, but for vastly different reasons.

The audience immediately gets an idea of the children's precociousness and the type of relationship they have with their father by the way they address him as "Atticus" instead of "dad" or something similar. This is clearly not meant to be disrespectful, but rather shows that Atticus treats his children almost as equals.

The main storyline for Atticus deals with an alleged rape. A colored man named Tom Robinson has been accused of brutally beating and raping a white woman named Mayella Ewell. Racial tensions are high in the town, and many of Atticus' neighbors (who are poor and uneducated) turn against him because he has agreed to defend Robinson.

Although the evidence in the case is flimsy and despite the fact that Atticus demonstrates quite convincingly that Tom Robinson couldn't possibly have committed the crime, the jury of 12 white people finds the defendant guilty. Tom is then killed by a posse as he is being transferred to a jail some miles away, where it was thought he would be much safer.

Meanwhile, Jem, Scout, and Dill engage in all the various summertime activities that you'd expect from children of that time period. One thing that the kids are very interested in is the scary-looking Radley house next door. According to neighborhood gossip, Mr. Nathan Radley keeps his grown son Arthur (whom the kids call "Boo") locked in the cellar because he is crazy and should have been institutionalized. In fact, it's a favorite pastime of Jem, Scout, and Dill's to dare each other to get on the Radley property and try to catch a glimpse of Boo (played by Robert Duvall in his very first movie). Of course as the storyline develops, Boo turns out not to be quite what the kids expected.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about To Kill a Mockingbird. On the one hand, I feel as though I'm supposed to like this film. It's considered one of the best American movies ever made and it's based on one of the best American novels ever written. Plus, Gregory Peck won a Best Actor Oscar for his role as Atticus Finch. And yet, I simply didn't find the film very interesting or compelling at all. I liked the novel well enough, but I didn't think the film did a very good job of capturing the right tone or mood of the original.

That being said, there's no doubt that Peck's performance was superb. In fact, I think that was the only part of the movie that I actually enjoyed. I've read other reviews about the movie that say how wonderful the child actors were, but I didn't find that to be the case at all. I thought they were average and didn't bring anything extra to their roles. Mary Badham, who played Scout, actually annoyed me a bit and wasn't at all like the Scout I imagined from reading the book, so I didn't enjoy any of her scenes.

If you're interested in classic films, then I think you might like To Kill A Mockingbird. However, if you're a big fan of the novel (as I am), you might not think this adaptation is worth your time. I certainly didn't.