God's Little Acre (1958)

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I can't believe Anthony Mann directed this. A director known for tense, psychological, character-driven stories. There's not an authentic character in the movie. They're all ridiculous stereotypes and caricatures. Not that they aren't enjoyable on some unintentionally funny camp level. Robert Ryan plays his role in such a way I can't tell if he's being serious (and acting badly) or intentionally hamming it up (and doing quite well). Tina Louse is extremely sexy and the highlight of the movie is her character constantly flaunting her heaving cleavage. Aldo Ray thinks he's in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Michael Landon is unrecognizable but amusing as Dave the albino.The film's plot is about a farmer who keeps digging up his land looking for his grandfather's buried gold. All the while his daughters and daughter-in-law are in a perpetual state of heat. There's also a silly Marxist subplot about mill workers revolting and taking back a closed mill.Those who view this as a camp film and enjoyable on that level, I sort of see their point. I mean, I didn't like it that much even for camp value. But I can see where some might. However, those reviewers here who seem to think this film is legitimately good perplex me. God's Little Acre is completely over the top, with no subtlety or intelligence about it. However, I will give it a passable score of 5 due to the camp and corn value some will get from it.

Oh what miserable characters. Everyone in this story is unhappy, and desperate for something: love, sex, a job, votes. But mostly, they're desperate for change.Ty Ty (Robert Ryan), a desperately poor dirt farmer in rural Georgia, digs holes on his property looking for gold supposedly buried by an ancestor. Ty Ty, a religious man, dedicates a small area of his property to God, unless that small area happens to be where the gold is buried; in which case he will re-locate God's parcel of land somewhere else, and keep the gold for himself.His five grown children, a mix of male hicks and trashy vixens, are as miserable and desperate as Ty Ty. They and their spouses fight among themselves over every little thing, including Ty Ty's delusional behavior. In one scene toward the end, Ty Ty tells his kids: "God didn't put us here to scrap and fight each other all the time ... I've tried all my life to keep a peaceful family ... if you'd just stop fightin'. To which one of his sons barks out: "You talk like an old fool". Later, Ty Ty angrily responds in a preachy tone: "If I was you, when I went to bed tonight, I'd get down on my knees and ... try talking to God a little."The script's plot is too drawn-out, given the premise; and the structure is terrible. Ty Ty is presumably the script's protagonist. Yet, a son-in-law named Bill (Aldo Ray) carries many of the scenes. Both dialogue and acting are dreadfully overwrought. The ending seems tacked on.The film's B&W lighting is probably the best element; it's quite good. Compared to other performances, I thought Buddy Hackett gave a pleasantly restrained performance.If you like overwrought, melodramatic stories with lots of talk, and centered around ignorant Southern hillbillies, this is the film for you.

This has to be one of the worst movies ever made. The overacting is constant, and the characters aren't the least bit realistic for the setting. I expect a certain amount of melodrama in the older pictures; but this one will make you shake your head. The whole story, at least as it's portrayed in the movie, is contrived and absurd. The accents aren't even remotely accurate, except of course where the actors don't even attempt to adopt a Southern accent; then they sound just like where they're from (Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, etc.). The rest of the time the actors and actresses simply sound like they're trying to make a Western... here's a little hint: people from the South, particularly during this period, DO NOT sound like they're from Texas. All Southern accents are not the same. I'm not even going to get started on the feasibility of a man getting shot and killed simply for turning the power on at a small mill... suffice it to say it's simply too stupid a notion to go into at length.So, in summation, the story itself (at least in this medium) is complete and utter nonsense. The sets don't look the first thing like the real South. And the terrible acting is further amplified by the ridiculous dialogue in which half of the characters sound like they're cowboys, and the other half sound like they're either from the Midwest or the Bronx.I explored my thesaurus to come up with an adjective that properly describes just how bad this movie is; and I'm caught between dreadful and inane. Perhaps I should just say the premise of the film is inane, and the execution was truly dreadful.

Apparently, when "God's Little Acre" first came out, much of it was cut for the theatrical release. Watching the unedited version, one can see why (needless to say, it's all pretty tame to us in the 21st century). Part of it is Tina Louise's very presence - I mean, what man wouldn't want to be stranded on an island with Ginger Grant? - but there's also a scene where Buddy Hackett works a pump for a woman in a bathtub (if that scene isn't a double entendre, then I don't know what is!).As for the movie itself, this story of a Georgia farmer (Robert Ryan) getting convinced that thar's gold in them thar holes in his garden does quite well. The idea of him tearing up his garden is an effective parallel for how the family gets torn up in the process. As for his friendship with the African-American guy, it's probably debatable whether they were sugar-coating race relations, or if they were encouraging tolerance. There could even be debates about how the movie portrays the South in general (the characters do come across as hicks).But overall, I recommend this flick. Usually, it would sort of weaken the movie to know that some of the cast members later became famous on TV shows - especially since one was known for seducing romantically incompetent men on a certain island - but they all do very well here. This is certainly a movie worth seeing. And the theme song will probably get stuck in your head. Also starring Aldo Ray, Jack Lord, Fay Spain, Vic Morrow and Michael Landon.