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Title: No comparison with the 1981 version
Review: Demand that someone release the old version on DVD. The characters were much more interesting, the action truer to the original Natalie Babbitt book, the sweet was sweeter, the evil eviler. It's too easy to portray evil as a leering, sneering, menacing "man in yellow". How much harder (and better) to put a pleasant face on it and let the actions speak for themselves. For all the characters it almost seems as though the director wrote down a two or three word description and told the actors, "This is your character; now, read your lines."
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