No less a Disney authority than Leonard Maltin himself is
rather dismissive of Greyfriars Bobby,
but I found it really charming. The lack
of emphasis on plot, seen as a weakness by some, is largely what I appreciated
about it. Instead we have a great
assembly of picaresque locales and poignant performances by veteran British
actors like Laurence Naismith, Kay Walsh and Donald Crisp in this oft-told true story of a super loyal little Skye Terrier that refuses to leave the grave of his
deceased master. Chaffey, (who later
directed Naismith in Ray Harryhausen’s Jason & the Argonauts, 1963),
does a fine job creating just the kind of bucolic and quaint atmosphere that
the Anglophile Walt Disney so often sought in his British-made productions. Sure, historians now doubt that the story was
much more than a hoax; and sure, such animal tales are more about humans needing to feel
validated by that kind of dogged devotion than a genuine respect for animals, but in this movie everything works
in a totally innocuous but involving way.
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