Every Thursday night, I (Anna) am part of a “Girl’s Night” with Ashleigh, Shannon, and our friend Izzy. We usually eat a meal prepared by that week’s host and watch a movie. After finishing our last selection of movies, we decided that we’d start watching the top 100 Disney movies according to disneymovielist.com as of July 31, 2013.
Last Thursday, Izzy hosted and we started with the 100th top movie which was The Light in the Forest. The movie originally came out in 1958 and was based on a book by Conrad Richter by the same name. As was usual in that time, Walt Disney took a lot of liberties with it and made the story more “family” friendly. The movie was never released to DVD let alone Blu-ray DVD, so Ashleigh was forced to dig out an old VHS player in order for us to watch it. We had fun reminiscing about VHSs and all the headaches that came with them.
The movie starred James MacArthur as True Son/John Butler and Fess Parker as Del Hardy. Both actors are no strangers to Disney films. MacArthur was in one of my favorites as a child, The Swiss Family Robinson, and Parker starred in all the Disney Davy Crocket films and TV shows. The Light in the Forest was very much a coming of age story. It’s about a white, young man, who is raised by Native Americans from infancy, but sent to live with his birth parents in hopes of keeping the peace between the Indians and white settlers. With the help of Del Hardy, True Son has to learn to fit in with the very people he was raised to hate.
I had never seen the movie or read the book, so I was excited to see the film. At the beginning, all of us thought the plot resembled the plot of Disney’s Pocahontas, but it turned out very different. Movies and books that have raciest themes that people overcome have always attracted my attention, so this movie did not disappoint. I’d recommend this for pretty much everyone. The story has a history lesson, a little bit of action, and an underlying love story to it. It’s a good story that shows the events of early America and how we got to where we are today.
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