Review of The Fighting Sullivans

So jaded our we as a nation that the scenario of this patriotic family drama today looks like it was created by aliens--foreigners who got the impression that WWII-era America may have resembled just this, conjured up through memories of spreads in the Saturday Evening Post. Close-knit, church-going kin with five sons and one daughter josh and rib and 'lick' each other throughout the 1930s, the children growing into fine, upstanding young adults by the dawn of the next decade. True story decked out with Hollywood trimmings, though most of the actors are so sincere that the sentiment doesn't feel heavy-handed. Still, these brothers (who march off in unison to the Naval Recruiter's office after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor) aren't given much individual character; we see them just as the director and scenarists hope we'll see them: as a fighting unit, so brave they don't even have second thoughts. These Fighting Sullivans were instant heroes to a rapturous war-time America, so much so that any hint of complexity in their characters has been scrubbed clean. Edward Ryan (as Al) looks a little puny taking womanly Anne Baxter into his arms, but Thomas Mitchell is wonderful as the patriarch of the family, and the child actors are each quite good. **1/2 from ****