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Best movie of this year hands down!

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Sentenced to a horrific death by his evil father for cowardess, Canterville her Charles Laughton must find a brave descendent to be released from a family curse. 300 years go by with no luck, and with his abandoned castle now inhabited by American soldiers. the bored ghost does what the idol dead do: pass the time by trying to scare the living. It's no shock to the audience that ironically one of those Americans (Robert Young) has the family birth mark, and with the help of distant Canterville relative (Margaret O'Brien), Young fulfills his destiny, faces his own cowardess and aides Laughton in escaping from the curse which keeps ghosts earthbound eternally.A true crowd pleaser, mixing in comedy, slight horror and war propaganda, this features three great performances, two of which are by notorious scene stealers and hams. Laughton is showy but filled with touching philosophy, longing for eternal rest after 300 years of a living non death, and O'Brien only goes off on a screeching tangent once but out of necessity. Young proves himself as always to be the completely likable all American hero. Joining them are Rags Ragland as Young's best pal, Una O'Connor as the hysterical and superstitious maid, and Elisabeth Risdon as Obrien's kindly aunt. There's a great jitterbug scene (referred to as woogie boogie by two British locales), a funny attempted haunting sequence by Laughton (where he gets scared himself) and an encounter with a missile at the end which is both tense and funny. An absolute winner overall in my book!

Other reviewers have noted the updating of this Oscar Wilde story to the 20th century and during World War II. The inclusion of a platoon of U.S. Army Rangers worked quite well. It enabled an array of cast members to join in the fun of this comedy, fantasy. This is an MGM film that lacks some of the technical quality that the studio was capable of in the 1940s. The story is a humorous one, and the screenplay is quite good. Two things earn this film the high rating I give it. First is the acting. All of the support cast are very good; but the three leads all shine in their roles. This was one of child star Margaret O'Brien's first films – she was just seven years old when it was release. O'Brien is wonderful as the polite, genteel, lady-like British little girl, Lady Jessica de Canterville. Robert Young as Cuffy Williams was actually older than the soldier he played, at 37. By now he was an accomplished actor with six dozen films behind him, including some excellent roles. And, Charles Laughton is excellent as the Canterville ghost, Sir Simon. Laughton truly brought a marvelous talent to acting. He excelled in the dramatic, comedy, and mystery. Here is has a double role and he's perfect in both roles. One other exceptional attribute of this film is the special effects. The camera work, filming and editing of the scenes with the ghost appearing, fading in and out, and flying across the room were excellent. I am surprised that the movie didn't get an academy award nomination for its special effects. This is an enjoyable movie for the whole family. One that I think the entire cast had fun making.

I don't blame the folks involved in this junk version of Oscar Wilde's beautiful, partly satirical, novella, "The Canterville Ghost". It was, after all, typical of the (well-deserved) propaganda films of WW2. But I too was a non-fan of Margaret O'Brien, especially when I was a child and the idea of revising the story to take place during WW2 turned me off. I admit she was in many better films than this one, even as a child star, and even though her line-reading was typical of the children on the present-day Disney channel. Oscar knew what he was doing, unlike the makers of this film.I also wonder why Charles Laughton who is still considered a major stage and film actor of his time got roped into this one but I suppose he considered it "fun". And, as usual for most actors, after a while they will seemingly do anything for a buck.I still cringe when I think about this film and the awful (supposedly naughty!) song about "Gertie from Bizertie" which was more acceptable, I suppose, than "Madamoiselle from Armentières".

I don't know what rating to rate my movie for 9.5 or 10.0 it was a just too great of a fantasy movie for me to rate such a low rating. Margaret O'Brien was charming, adorable, and a nice little treat to watch even though she is not in the movie all the time, but still, she was nice with the crying and the acting that I'll will just wait a ten for. She was great in Meet me in St. Louis and she was great in this one. I would really desire for this movie to be released on DVD in Amazon or something because 3-4 weeks ago, I have just finished this movie on VHS tape and I thought it was a really good movie to recommend to old movie fans. I would have to say Margaret O'Brien is probably great in all her movies although I haven't seen all of them yet, but I am looking forward to checking all of her child stars movies out before checking her when she was older like The secret garden-older. Margaret O'Brien has just been great acting like every time she cried, I started tearing up and started sobbing a little like MMISL she was really great playing "Tootie" and her little cry at the end. Margaret O'Brien is just a great character to adore as much as little Bailee Madison or Judith Barsi. They were really close to tearing up the audience near Margaret O'Brien but if Judith Barsi was still here, I would be very happy about that that she will be great as an Adult and teenanger.