Rating: PG
Genre:
Drama
Release Date: 11/22/2005
SubTitles: English/Espanol
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD2/DD1
Run Time: 84 Minutes
Flags: Child Classic
Distributor/Studio: 20th Century Fox
Despite stiff competition like
Poor Little Rich Girl and
Heidi,
Bright Eyes is arguably the best of
Shirley Temple's 1930s vehicles. The little curly-top is cast as Shirley Blake, daughter of Mary Blake (
Lois Wilson), the widowed housemaid of snooty J. Wellington and Anita Smythe (
Theodore Von Eltz and
Dorothy Christy). Though continually terrorized by the Smythe's obnoxious, doll-destroying daughter Joy (
Jane Withers), Shirley finds comfort in the fact that she is the darling of the airplane-pilot buddies of her late father. Especially fond of our heroine is flyboy Loop Merritt, who arranges a birthday party for the girl. Alas, even as Shirley sings "On the Good Ship Lollipop" to a gathering of beaming airmen, her mother Mary is run over by a car while shopping for her daughter's birthday cake. It thus becomes Loop's painful duty to tell Shirley that her mother "cracked up," just like her father did (if this scene doesn't move the viewer to tears, the viewer is made of granite). Fortunately, the Smythe's irascible Uncle Ned takes a liking to Shirley, securing her financial future at the expense of his repulsive relatives. But before this happy ending can come about, Shirley must be rescued from an imperiled passenger plane by the resourceful Loop. Though
Shirley Temple is inarguably the main drawing card in
Bright Eyes, 9-year-old
Jane Withers is equally terrific as the pint-sized "villainess"; indeed, some critics felt that
Withers stole the show, and it was this as much as anything else that earned
Withers her own starring series at
20th Century-Fox.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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