Watch Li'l Abner For Free

Very best movie i ever watch

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The Plot.Li'l Abner becomes convinced that he is going to die within twenty-four hours, so agrees to marry two different girls: Daisy Mae (who has chased him for years) and Wendy Wilecat (who rescued him from an angry mob). It is all settled at the Sadie Hawkins Day race.The movie isn't as bad as some reviewers say. It's actually somewhat interesting to see the first renderings of some of these characters.A few giggles here and there and a notable appearance of Buster Keaton as Lonesome Polecat.

I came across the budget DVD of this one some time back though I never got around to renting it, not so much because of, say, Leonard Maltin’s lowly opinion but rather the unavailability of the later and better-known musical version from 1959. Consequently, I’d previously been interested in it more as a Buster Keaton film (in fact, many a Silent comedian make an appearance here) than as an adaptation of the Al Capp comic strip – but, having now found the latter as well, I decided to make it a double-bill! In retrospect, Keaton’s role is minor (playing the Indian Lonesome Polecat who has a long-haired and eyeless giant for a sidekick) despite the ballyhoo regarding his presence on the DVD front cover.Still, despite its intrinsic cornball nature, the film proved less oppressive than I had anticipated: being a low-budget production and a brief 73 minutes in length, the plot (as seen in the musical version) has been considerably streamlined – focusing solely on the Sadie Hawkins’ Day race (where the unwedded females of Dogpatch pursue the community’s eligible bachelors) and the character of the villainous Earthquake McGoon. Even so, the piece’s essence is already there – including the unexpected earthiness of the girls; it goes without saying, however, that the later film is the more satisfactory rendition of LI’L ABNER.

I was pleasantly surprised watching this comedy for a number of reasons. First, it was not as low budget and amateurish as I expected. It was actually a quite respectable B movie with make-up, sets, stunts and camera-work that matched the level of W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy features of the time.Second, Buster Keaton's short role prefigured the third banana roles he would play in the American International Beach Movies of the 1960's. His on-screen time is less than five minutes, still, I suspect he had a lot more to do with the production of the movie than his bit part would indicate. The gags have a Keatonesque quality. For example the ending scenes of the women chasing men are reminiscent of the ending scenes in his "Seven Chances." The world of Dogpatch has a self contained, parody of the intellectual world quality, as does many of the comedic worlds created by Keaton (See his "Three Ages" for example.The humor in the movie foreshadows the hillbilly humor of the 1960's television series, "The Beverly Hillbillies." A recent Lucille Ball biog movie suggested that Keaton had played a major part in the success of the 1950's television series "I Love Lucy." If Keaton did play a role in designing some of the gags in this movie, one might suggest that Keaton was in some sense responsible for a great deal of the successful comedies of the 1950's and 1960's.On the other hand, the producers might have hired them only because they liked his silent film work and he might not have had any input to the film other than his two or three days on set in his bit part. I wonder if anybody else has any information about the role Keaton played in this still charming movie.

OK, so this is as hokey as they come, but really sort of enjoyable. Jeff York as Li'l Abner is good, and Martha O'Driscoll as Daisy Mae is beautiful, so how can you go wrong? This film spends about the first 30 minutes establishing the locations and characters, and the final 43 minutes resolving the (thin) plot structure that revolves around both a Sadie Hawkins day race and Earthquake McGoon's capture and subsequent escape. The final 10 minutes are really fast paced with Wendy Wildcat and Daisy chasing after poor L'il Abner as he attempts to evade marriage. Hey, not a classic, but not bad either.