Return to Snowy River

by Miss Elliot

(Disclaimer: I do not agree with the blurb at the top of this poster. Nope. Sorry.)

Okay, so this is going to be a sort of “how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways” review. I suppose it’s boring to go point by point, but I exhausted my creative capabilities while writing the MFSR review.

I guess the idea behind this movie was: “Hey guys, TMFSR is sooooooo popular!!! Let’s make a sequel! Jim left Jessica in the other movie, so let’s bring them back together!” That will be so jolly and wonderful, right?

Wrong.

So, here’s what we don’t like about Return to Snowy River:

– The language. In every scene there is very heavy language. Even though it’s a Disney! I don’t know what company made TMFSR the original, but they managed to keep it at least mostly clean.

– The characters look older (of course! I’m not complaining about that) but they also have 1980’s hairstyles and it’s all wrong. Jessica is wearing riding pants in one scene…

…and look, Jim’s got his hair in a mullet – the famous hairstyle of the 80’s. Bleh. And look, his shirt. Hon. Est. Ly. And Jessica’s hair. No. No. NO.

– The dad. No one is Jessica’s dad except Kirk Douglas. No one, ever.

Seriously, is Jessica Amy Grant? No. Amy Grant is Amy Grant, and she reserves the right to the hair. Sorry, Jess.

– The violence. There is a scene where Jim and a guy named Alistair Patton (I don’t CARE if he’s Scottish, he’s the worst thing that ever happened to Snowy River besides Brian Dehenny) have a huge fight with a lot of blood. Ewwww. And there’s a repeat of the ride-down-the-mountain scene, but the horse is shot and rolls down on top of Jim. And there’s a scene where Seb gets run over by a group of men on horseback. More blood. And so on…

– The random characters we’ve never met before (Seb, Mrs. Darcy (no, NOT Elizabeth Bennet Darcy. This is after her), Jake, Alistair Patton, etc.) that are sort of there.

– The characters they leave out: Aunt Rosemary, Spur (but I guess that wasn’t ‘their’ fault, if they didn’t have Kirk Douglas), Mrs. Bailey, and so on.

– The general 1980’s-ness of it. It departs entirely from the spirit of the original movie.

Ahem.

And with that picture, we come to something that I thought I was going to rant about a lot more. I was going to express my EXTREME displeasure at the fact that they were living up there in the mountains together before they were married. So, we watched the movie. At the very end, off they ride to the cabin again. There was no wedding scene. I don’t see no ring. And we all shake our heads and sigh.

But I found out that there IS a wedding scene that was cut when the movie was brought to America from Australia. I guess they thought we’d assume that Jess and Jim were married when they rode off together the last time. Well, we didn’t. (By the way, the wedding scene is really cute, in spite of Jim’s hair, Jessica’s dress (ugh) and Brian Dehenny. Watch it here.)

That doesn’t take away the fact that in the middle of the movie, they were living in the cabin alone together before they were married. I am seriously displeased. But it does take away the erhmmmm-ness of the ending scenes.

So here ends my rant on RTSR. I hope you enjoyed it, because it was quite relieving for me. Quite relieving indeed.

Oh, and I’d better mention something else or my sister (a big horse-lover) will kill me. The reason she doesn’t like it is because it’s sad and the horse dies. And all the above.

Here’s the trailer for this movie. See? I told you.

All right, it’s done! I don’t have to ever think about this movie again!!!!

Ahem. Here’s the trailer for the real movie, so you can experience my relief.