Product: Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story
Rating: 1.0
A sad distortion of a beloved classic. . .
If I hadn't read the entire Anne of Green Gables series half a dozen times, I probably would have liked this movie, for the scenery, costumes, story line and acting were brilliant. But being a devoted fan of the books, I don't particularly care for any of the movies, especially the last two, because of the way that the characters, events, and settings were distorted at the whim of the producers. Anne of Green Gables was OK, because it followed the basic story line, but I was dissapointed with Anne of Avonlea, which left out wonderful characters in the books, and threw in people who didn't even exist, as well as combing elements from books 2,3, and 4 in the series. The last film was especially dissapointing. To begin with, the settings were all wrong. Anne and Gilbert NEVER lived in, or even visited, New York, or anywhere else in America, for that matter. In the books, the time of Gilbert and Anne's courtship was set in the 1880s -- a peaceful, prosperous time. The turmoil of WWI came much later, when Anne's youngest daughter, Rilla, was a teenager, and Anne's three sons go away to fight in the war. The wedding scene was a dissapointment -- I think they should have been already married at the time the film began , or at least at the beginning of the movie, when times were happier. We had been waiting to see it for so long that it should have been a very joyous moment, but instead it was rushed and clouded with sorrow. Also, the story should have shown Anne and Gilbert's own children (or at least one or two of them) instead of an adopted war orphan who didn't even exist in the books. I was horribly dissapointed in this film, and I'm glad L.M. Montgomery didn't live to see how her Anne of Green Gables series was so horribly rearranged.