one of my absolute favorites!

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Turgid, overlong epic has a story with possibilities-organized religion's arrogant assumption that what it believes is right even if it destroys a civilization. While it conveys that in many ways something is ultimately missing from the overall film that keeps the viewer at a distance making it less involving then it needs to be. Von Sydow is a fine actor but his Reverend Hale is such a pompous, small minded autocrat that spending over 2 1/2 hours with him is a trial. Julie Andrews is wasted, surely they could have found a way for her to sing more, although she does have one good scene near the end. The location filming is breath taking but that only will carry a film so far and this doesn't have enough else to make it worth seeking out.

Beautifully made, wonderful music BUT gets very BORING mainly due to Von Sydow's character. It was an odd choice for Julie Andrews as she was the Queen of Hollywood at the time but, as usual, she gives a lovely performance. The other performances are good too, it is just Von Sydow's character constant bible bashing that simply starts irritating. Elmer Bernstain's music is superb and the photography visually stunning. Very long and obviously some omissions from the original Michener novel. Would have been interesting to see what Rodgers and Hammerstein could have done with it after their masterpiece South Pacific, based also on Michener novels. Worth watching if you can stay awake!!

From the day Captain Cook arrived on those beautiful islands, Hawaii like Poland was cursed because of geography. Poland situated between two gigantic European powers just became a pawn in the eternal military and diplomatic chess game.Hawaii located where it is between North America and the Orient, when sea travel improved it was only a matter of time before the big powers came a-callin'. And they came from both directions. Not shown in the time frame this film covers, but soon after, waves of Japanese and Chinese immigrants landed on the shore. Hawaii was coveted by all and America got it.Max Von Sydow plays a young New England minister out to bring the gospel to the heathen as he sees them and has been taught to see them. His church won't send him out to the south seas without a wife, lest he be tempted by sins of the flesh, so on a short acquaintance he marries Julie Andrews. She in turn has been home pining away for whaling captain Richard Harris. When Von Sydow and Andrews get to Hawaii over the course of their story Harris would reappear.Naturally its quite a culture shock for the New Englanders when they get to Hawaii. The film's story covers about a quarter of a century of Hawaiian history and the history of the changing attitudes of Andrews and Von Sydow. James Michener's original novel was of War and Peace duration and I suppose the final script was as best they could get it and cover what he was trying to convey. Despite the obvious racist feelings that Von Sydow has, he's a basically decent man who does do some positive good.His problem is that everything with him has to be filtered through the Bible. There's a lot of incest going on in Hawaii when he lands there. Reason being is that these are islands with a limited number of mating partners. Now incest is bad as we know because it does eventually weaken the gene pool. But Von Sydow hardly takes a scientific approach, how could he, he doesn't know it, he hasn't been taught it.Julie Andrews is a far cry from the perky Mary Poppins. She develops quite an attachment to Hawaii and its people and her approach with them is fundamentally different than her husband's. It's not a bad performance.Richard Harris is the lusty whaling captain of Andrews previous affections. I tend to think his part might have been edited down. In a recent biography of Harris, it was stated he and Andrews did not get along at all on the set. Harris in those days was a whole lot like the characters he played like this one in Hawaii.Of course when you've got Hawaii as a subject for a camera, the photography could not be anything but gorgeous.Hawaii covers a period not well known to most Americans except Hawaiians. And indeed they are Americans and have been since 1959. I think people could learn something from this film even with the script flaws.

The film begins in 1819. When we first hear about Jerusha (Julie Andrews), she is a "Christian girl of 22." Later, her tombstone (the spoiler in this message) reads: "1799 - 1834". Do the math: she must have been 19 or 20 in 1819.This film is an amazing hodgepodge of sometimes good writing and often bad acting. The pre-credit sequence, a narration of how people first came to Hawaii 800 or so years ("30 generations") before, is quite poetic and visually stunning. But much of the acting is stiff and passion-less. (Do look for Carroll O'Connor -– very good in a small part at the beginning as Jerusha's father.) The film uses one fascinating (and very effective) device: some scenes end with the first few lines of dialog of the next scene coming up "early", as a way of propelling the film forward. Considering how avant garde this is, it's surprising this has not been used in any other mainstream films -- at least none that I know of. (I recently purchased the DVD because I was interested in seeing the film with captions (CC). It is missing about 15-20 minutes, most of it from the ocean voyage towards the beginning of the film. No special features to speak of.)