Donovan's Reef

Media:	DVD
Directed by:	John Ford
Starring:	John Wayne, Lee Marvin
Release date:	05 June, 2001
List price:	~~$14.99~~
Our price:	$10.16 that is 32% off!

Donovan's Reef

Average rating: Stars

Donovan's Reef

This John Wayne movie is full of excitement. There is a little romance, some good fights and yet a lesson to be learned about acceptance of those who are a little different then you are. It also shows the value of forgiveness so a family can be a family again. I like the light hearted feeling and music in this movie.

Donovan's Reef - John Wayne, Lee Marvin

A fine, frivolous and fun comedy

John Wayne is not known for his comedies but he did do some fine work. The same could be said for Director John Ford. This film is proof of their talents. It is not something to be taken seriously but it is at once fun, sweet, dated and a precious Hollywood relic.

John Wayne stars as Michael Donovan, a saloon keeper and shipping owner on a South Seas paradise island. Lee Marvin plays Gilhooley, a brawling friend who shows up every birthday for a ritual fight. Jack Warden rounds out the trio as the Doc. What all of them have in common is that they were shipwrecked on the island durnign WWII while it was under Japanese occupation and led a resistance movement but all of that is in the past. Now the war is over and each has carried on with life. In the case of the Doc, he married the hereditary princess of the island and had three wonderful kids. The problem is that he has a daughter from a prior marriage back in Boston who is scheming to be heiress of a major shipping line there and who comes out to the island to get evidence against her father she can use to show he is unfit. She arrives while the doc is making house calls to other islands and John Wayne steps in to protect the doc by claiming the kids as his own. Naturally, the Duke and the heiress fuss and feud but we all know that she is destined to be his lady.

Much of this film is silly but that does not stop it from being fun. The film tries to be racially diverse in a style that would never go over today but was quite a step forward in the 50s. There is little or know physical danger beyond that which is alluded to from the war. The barroom brawls are handled as entertainment for all concerned. As I said, it is silly but it works.

John Wayne plays himself as he does in all of his films. Lee Marvin plays a buffoon who manages to be fun even when he is being insulting. Jack Warden does little himself but what he does do, he does well and believably. Caesar Romero plays the French governor of the island and is fun as a good hearted, light villain scheming to marry the heiress himself. He too contributes to the success of this south seas romp. Perhaps the most fun is had from the 3 kids. They are not "actors" but they are first quality hams and they tend to steal the show with their campy lines.

Sit back and enjoy this one.

John Wayne, Lee Marvin - Donovan's Reef

Polynesian Pleasure

There are days when things just don't go right. Business doesn't hit on all cylinders, or something in one's personal life is out of alignment. Irritation can set in. Frustration. Just plain old down-in-the-dumps mopeyness.

There ARE things that can be done about this, especially if you have a VHS or DVD player. You can pop in any number of good movies and use your scene selector to get you to that "special part" that just warms your heart and chases your blues away.
You can watch the end of "Shenandoah" from the point where Jimmy Stewart goes to the family cemetery to talk to his wife Martha, on through to the arrival of "the boy" in the middle of Sunday preaching. Or you can watch James Cagney as George M. Cohan get his Medal of Honor from FDR in "Yankee Doodle Dandy", tap dance down the White House steps and join in the troop parade down Pennsylvania Avenue singing "Over There". Or you can scene-select to the Von Trapp family singing "Edelweiss" as a farewell appearance at the Salzburg Music Festival in "The Sound of Music" and then follow them across the alps into Switzerland at the close to that fine film. OR , if the season is right, you can quick jump to the Columbia Inn in Pine Tree, Vermont, in time to see retired General "Tom Waverly"(Dean Jagger) get sandbagged by Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and company at the surprise reunion of the "151st Division" at the end of "White Christmas".

OR...you can plug in "Donovans Reef" and just sit back and LET THE WHOLE THING ROLL!!!!! Because from the first moment of the opening credits, when the delightful, infectious musical rendition of "Pupa O Ewa" ("Pearly Shells") cranks up...until the very end of the film...when "Pupa O Ewa" is cranking again...you can just leave your "doldrums" behind.

A "downer" mentality cannot stand up to "Donovan's Reef" for long.

This 1963 "swan song" for the collaborative filmmaking team of John Ford and John Wayne is one of the most enjoyable light comedies ever put to film. There are many movie aficionadoes who love Grant & Hepburn in "Bringing Up Baby" , Hepburn & Tracy in "Adam's Rib" and such, and you can't "diss" classics like "Some Like It Hot" and numerous Doris Day vehicles. But me, I say "Donovan's Reef" belongs up there with the best of them.

There's not a lot of snappy repartee here, but that doesn't matter. Neither does the fact that it seems almost a case of "Let's make this up as we go along" moviemaking. "Hmmmm. This is a Paramount Picture", set in the South Pacific...Hey!!!...let's get Dorothy Lamour for it!!!!!". However it was conceived and put together...IT WORKS!!

It is a broad, boozy, knuckleheaded comedy that works because it has really good actors in it, having a really good time, turning out a story full of heart...all under the guidance of one of Hollywood's greatest directors.

John Wayne is Michael "Guns' Donovan , bar owner of "Donovan's Reef"...a place Jimmy Buffet would surely like to visit. Lee Marvin is Donovan's old war buddy "Boats" Gilhooly, who is his rival in "most everything". They fight a lot, especially since they share the same birthday and neither likes to share. Some of the staged "altercations" between them smack of Wayne vs. McGlaglen in "The Quiet Man". Jack Warden is the local missionary doctor, a widower twice over, who has three children by a polynesian wife (royalty), and one older daughter from his first marraige in America.

Island frivolities get sidetracked when word comes that the older daughter (a "proper Bostonian") is coming to see her father
(on a covert investigatory mission to see if a will can be broken). Suspecting this daughter, Amelia (Elizabeth Allen), might be a racist who might hurtfully interact with her mixed race siblings, Wayne & company stage a "switcheroo" con on Ms. Dedham from Boston...one which represents the Duke ("Guns") as their father and not "The Doc".

The course of the film is about establishing the con and then maintaining it. They fail in this, but it turns out not to matter. Amelia is not entirely the prig they take her to be...and by the end of the movie she is no prig at all.

This is a fun movie to watch and experience. The cast is uniformly great. Cesar Romero is a hoot as the French colonial governor, as is John Fong as his assistant. Mike Mazurki is funny as a local gendarme and Marcel Dalio evokes his own share of chuckles as the island priest. The children are played quite well by Jacqueline Malouf, Cherylene Lee, and Tim Stafford. Jacqueline Malouf, in particular, is appealingly winsome as Leilani, the eldest of the three island children and the heir to her mother's throne. A scene near the end of the film where Amelia realizes Leilani is her sister and overturns "the con" is absolutely...exhiliratingly...heart warming.

Is this a feel-good movie? You betcha. A "South Seas" state of mind caught on quite strongly in the early 1960s. This trend had three basic points of origin...the play and film version of "South Pacific", a very popular television series called "Adventures In Paradise", and good old "Donovan's Reef".

Three good deals, all the way around.

As for Duke's end of the deal,this DVD edition of "Reef" is just beautiful. The sound is superb, as is the image transfer. The colors of Hawaii come out gloriously in this...as one would expect when the lens work was done by William Clothier, one of the greatest of all Hollywood cinematographers. And Cyril Mockridge's musical scoring is sublime, especially his choice to feature "Pupa O Ewa" extensively in the movie. That song gets under your skin and STAYS there...and will often come back to stick in your mind when you are nowhere near a television set or DVD player.

"Donovan's Reef" ...or "Gilhooly's Reef"...makes no nevermind to me. I love it just the same. Thanks Duke, and thanks Mr. Ford.
We owe you.