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Rating:  - A Real Treasure
"Treasure of Matecumbe" is one of my favorite childhood movies, and rewatching it recently has been a treat. I saved up my points from the Disney Movie Rewards club to get it, but I'm glad that it's available now.
To quote another review, the DVD presentation is NOT cut; though the back claims a 107 minute run-time, it runs approximately 117 minutes (1:57). It is disappointing that the presentation is fullscreen (1.33:1 aspect ratio) when it undoubtedly was filmed in widescreen, and it hasn't been restored as much as one would hope. (Tthere is a large amount of grain, artifacts, etc.)
Fans of Disney films would be wise to pick up this great movie. It's a great film every member of your family can enjoy.
Rating:  - Skip It, Read the Book If You Can Find It.
I had always wanted to see this movie as it was based on one of my favorite books, the historical novel "A Journey to Matecumbe" by Robert Lewis Taylor, who also wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "The Travels of Jamie McPheeters." The book is a wonderful exciting and funny tale of a post-Civil War journey by a young boy and his uncle from Kentucky to the Florida Keys being pursued by the Ku Klux Klan and a vengeful southern aristocrat, with lots of great adventures in between.
I spent $[...] for this movie and now wish I hadn't. The names of a few characters from the book are retained, but almost everything else is changed. It is neither particularly exciting or funny and it wastes the talents of a number of excellent character actors like Peter Ustinov, Dub Taylor, George Lindsay and Joan Hackett. It was also made on the cheap with lots of stock footage of the exotic locales that the characters are supposed to visit and lots of process shots filmed in front of blue screens. I suppose very young children MIGHT like it, but there are some violent scenes that make it problematic even for them. It's an eternal mystery why Hollywood buys the rights to film wonderful books and then doesn't put on the screen anything of what made the books wonderful in the first place.
Rating: - Cross-burning, lynching and squaws! Where's Leonard Maltin? ;)
If you're looking to relive fond memories of sitting in front of the TV Sunday afternoons watching The Wonderful World of Disney, this will fit the bill nicely.
Treasure of Matecumbe has everything you'd expect from the generally mediocre live-action output Disney was known for in the 1970s: Bad rear-projection shots when people are outdoors? Check. Grainy, mismatched inserts of wildlife borrowed from True-Life Adventures episodes shot 25 years earlier? Check. Half-hearted attempt at a contemporary-sounding theme song (wholly inappropriate for the post-Civil War setting of this film)? Check.
Sort of a hybrid of Huckleberry Finn and the Apple-Dumpling Gang, Treasure of Matecumbe (presented full-screen pan-and-scan, subtitled, no extras) follows the river-borne trek of two boys in pursuit of buried treasure. Along the way they pick up a southern belle and a crooked medicine man, face thuggish river folk, alligators, mosquitoes, a hurricane, masked Indian tribesman, and... the KKK?
Yes--in what must be a Disney first, we actually see a white-hooded mob set a cross on fire at would-be lynching (here, to punish a white Yankee "traitor"). The lynching is disrupted when the boys attack with MOLOTOV COCKTAILS!
In a later scene, male prisoners of the Matecumbe tribesman are referred to repeatedly as "squaws" (which, per the film, apparently translates to "slaves").
While I admit I was initially somewhat shocked by these scenes only because they were so unexpected, this feeling was quickly supplanted by immense gratitude that I was not forced to endure a 10 minute lecture from Leonard Maltin explaining the historical context or apologizing for this now politically incorrect content.
Does this mark the end of Disney's kowtowing to the easily offended? Will Disney begin releasing vintage content without apology and without censorship? Let's hope!
Rating:  - Good Offering
This is a great example of The Wonderful World of Disney. Peter Ustinov in a Disney Movie is always a great thing and I love him in both this and Candleshoe.
The story follows the journey of a young boy who inherits a map and decides to follow it. He and his friend travel through the south just after the Civil War, braving the rapids, wild, and despicable bad guys (who killed his father) to find his inheritance. Will it be everything he (and those in his company) hope for?
A good and safe movie for families of all ages.. A credit to the memory of W. E. Disney..
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