It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Nice approach to life in New England in the beginning of the 20th century. It is told from the viewpoint of one of it's inhabitants, who acts as the narrator throughout the movie. Adapted from a Broadway show, it tells of the coming of age of two teenage neighbors who grew up together and eventually marry. It has an attractive cast with a good supporting actors to flesh out the story, a simple and predictable tale of simple and predictable people.The story is perhaps too true to life, as it is unexciting and lacks a compelling scene or event to draw the viewer in. Pleasant and agreeable, but plodding and even-handed and somewhat overrated for my taste. But that's what moviegoing is all about. The star rating is in the heading. The website no longer prints mine.

I haven't read or seen the play, so I'll leave that topic to a late night discussion group. Thanks to great production design (Menzies), cinematography (Glennon), and art direction (Rachmil), the movie raises small town conformity to near poetic level. Those majestic skyscapes hovering over the elegiac last third lift the narrative to a rare ethereal plateau. Such b&w effects are simply beyond the reach of modern coloration, and couch the film in an appropriate dream-like space.Sure, nothing much happens in the story. But that's the point. It's the cycle of birth, love, work, death in an idealized small town that's celebrated. The wives agreeably clean and mother, the husbands agreeably earn and father, while the kids look forward to filling their slots. Do they lack imagination? Perhaps, but the overriding message is small town contentment. Happily, the results avoid the saccharine, largely because narrator Craven contrasts with what might become sticky. Thus we can concentrate on the banal events that make up a settled life, and maybe get a new appreciation of them. I can dig that even though I know early 19th century life in a factory or mining town would not yield the same harmonious results. Yes indeed, the rural Grovers Corner is an America that only exists in dreams of time past, and for folks who yearn for the "good ol' days". But the movie itself is none the worse for any of that.

I read the play in High School in the early 1960s. Along with "Bridge of San Luis Rey." Both, I thought were excellent. There is something about remembering the past, looking at the past, thinking about those who have died, have left our lifes. "Goodbye Mr. Chips." "Chariots of Fire." To recall two famous works.I have never seen the play on stage. And I don't think this movie adaptation is the best format. I do recall seeing a filmed stage performance that was much better--partly because in the end, Emily dies, and partly because a stage set seems to do so much with minimal props; hence, dialogue becomes emphasized.The stage manager breaking that fourth wall and speaking to the audience would be used by George Burns in his TV program. Some moments of the film seemed to be techniques borrowed from Hitchcock. The Aaron Copeland score didn't overwhelm the drama.Wilder apparently approved of this film ending where Emily lives instead of dying, as in the stage play. That adaptation makes the ending corny. Does it detract from the play? I think it does. The whole point of the play is the mundane becomes profound, creating a connection from one human being to another. We connect when we interact and we interact at mundane moments. Sadly, death is one of those mundane (and profound) moments. And not having Emily die, seems to trivialize the play.There was a line toward the end of the movie. Emily says: we interact but don't seem to connect. In this day and age of Facebook, twitter, email, the world wide web--it struck a modern cord--we interact and yet fail to connect.The play works; this move--because Emily doesn't die--fails. "Goodbye Mr. Chips" works because Mr. Chips and the school boys are all exposed for their frailty. Mr. Chips as a barely competent teacher and the students for being prigs, as all students are. And "Mr. Chips" works because he survived and endured for what 50 years--and that scope of time adds to the gravitas that became Mr. Chips. (Had he died early in his teaching career--it would be absurdest drama.) "Chariots of Fire" works because we are looking back from a perspective of the 1970s to the 1920s and memory is emblazoned as the theme of the movie, memory enshrined in trophies and the moral imperative those trophies symbolize.I recommend the movie because it is film adaptation that Thornton Wilder approved. But any filmed stage presentation is better when it adheres to the original Thornton Wilder stage play.

Perhaps the movie going public wasn't ready for Our Town as its author Thornton Wilder envisioned it. If so, another screen version was just the ticket with Paul Newman now presenting in the role of Stage Manager that Frank Craven created.Frank Craven, Martha Scott, and Doro Merande recreated their stage roles when independent producer Sol Lesser bought the rights to Our Town and filmed it independently for United Artists. The play takes one back to the turn of the last century to Calvin Coolidge rural New England as seen through the eyes of the town druggist who doubles as Stage manager. As he so eloquently puts it nothing much changes in this town, the new immigrants who work in the mill are pretty separate from the Yankee pioneer stock who we look at. Going through the graveyard you see the tombstone names are the same from generation to generation. We're primarily concerned with the Gibbs and Webb families and the budding romance between George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Martha who made her Broadway debut as Emily makes her screen debut also. The fast rising William Holden plays the nice kid George Gibbs and was good in it. So good in fact that he fought that kind of type casting for years until Sunset Boulevard.Unfortunately in this version the ending was radically changed and really did cheapen the production. Thornton Wilder's message about the quiet moments of life holding the most dear memories does not quite come across.One thing that wasn't in Our Town as Wilder wrote it was the explicit gayness of the choirmaster Stinson as played by Philip Wood. It's almost axiomatic that the music in just about any church, organist or choirmaster is usually a gay man. Stinson is gay, no question about it and as the stage manager says, some are not cut out for small town life. It's why he drinks and why he hangs himself, there aren't any kindred spirits for him in tiny Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. Stinson would have appreciated Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, he would have known exactly what Jonah Blechman was going through there.If Wilder were writing it post Stonewall, Our Town would have been more explicit on that point. And maybe it will be in future interpretations.