Product: Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story
Rating: 1.0
High-faluting mumbo-jumbo
In the previous installment of Kevin Sullivan series of "Anne" movies, Gilbert Blythe convinces Anne Shirley that if she wants to write a book that might actually get published, she should stop writing the "high-faluting mumbo-jumbo" stories that she had attempted for years, and write simple stories about the life and people she already knew -- people like Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert and Rachel Lynde. Anne finally came to realize that Gilbert was right. Oddly, Kevin Sullivan thought Gilbert was wrong. The result was one of the most horridly depressing movies I have ever endured: "Anne of Green Gables -- The Continuing Story."The first two "Anne" movies were pure romance: they depicted (to slightly misquote the Cervantes character in "Man of La Mancha") "Life, not as it is, but as it should be." Sullivan apparently wanted to leave such "childish" things behind, and produce an "adult" movie about Anne -- one with cynicism and violence and at least the possibility of illicit sex. What he came up with was so foreign to the first two movies, and so ugly, that it should simply be flushed like all the rest of the... well, you know what gets flushed.Think of the cinematography. The first two movies were so visually beautiful that they could bring tears to the eyes simply though the scenery. The colors were rich and bright and warm, and it seems the sun always shone. The scene in the first "Anne" where Matthew brought Anne to Green Gables down the lane through the flowering orchard ("The Avenue") was as beautiful as any scene I have ever seen in any move, ever. Even the winter scenes were beautiful! In real life, of course, Canadian winters are brutal. But the Anne movies were romance: life, not as it is, but as it should be. On the other hand, "The Continuing Story" seemed to be filmed in one color, a dead and ugly gray. Sullivan undoubtedly thought that was more adult and more realistic. He was wrong; it was simply ugly.And consider the characters. Sullivan apparently thought it necessary to include at least the possibility of illicit sex. Certainly Anne comes close to adultery with that Jack Garrison character. When thus tempted, the "real" Anne -- the one from the the first two movies -- could only have one response: "There can never be anyone for me but Gilbert." That line, perhaps the most gloriously unrealistic, purely romantic line ever spoken in a movie, was what Gilbert said in the second movie, when he was explaining to Anne why he broke off his engagement with Christine Stewart: he could love only Anne. And Anne could love only Gilbert. That Anne did not tell Jack that in this misbegotten movie proves that it wasn't really Anne. They called her Anne, and the got Megan Follows to play her, but it wasn't Anne. It was a different character.This movie deserves a lot less than one star. Do not buy it. It is really nothing but a lot of high-faluting mumbo-jumbo, as Gilbert said. Kevin Sullivan should have known better.