When boys were boys, and movies were movies!

OCOKA

I first saw this movie in 1976 at a theatre during a summer re-release of this movie done by Walt Disney at that time. Even at age eight, I could feel the campiness and see through its mid-60's cliché-ridden script filled with small-town, pollyanna-ish schmaltz.

Nevertheless, the movie continues to strike a chord for young boys and those associated, or those who have been associated with scouting, which was why I welcomed it yet again, when I saw it three years later at the age of 11 in the summer of 1979 while at Boy Scout camp in northern Wisconsin.

Of course, we were hootin' and hollerin' at its corniness and antiquity, but it seemed appropriate at the time to throw popcorn at our makeshift screen, due to the squalid splendor of our surroundings in the deep woods of Wisconsin. However, there were a few scenes that I welcomed seeing again at age 11, that perhaps I hadn't really connected with at age eight when I first saw it.

For starters, there was the scene involving Whitey's father, the town drunk, showing up for Whitey's BSA Troop 'Dads' Night' meeting on a hot summer night, thoroughly sloshed, with several buckets of melting and dripping vanilla ice cream in hand for the boys to enjoy -- much to the consternation of the other fathers and the undisguised embarrassment and disgust of Whitey.

Then, there was the scene showing Whitey's flair for lifesaving and savoir faire when he slaps the bejeesus out of a blubbering troop member during a scout mountain hike gone awry.

Although it has been 25 years since I last saw this film, I've come to the conclusion that despite this film's abundance of chauvinism and anachronisms, what does work for this film, even nowadays, is its paying homage to certain American rites of passage that have for the last 75 years or so, remained essentially unchanged.

A must see for anyone who was or is a boy, or who has boys of their own.

score /10

OCOKA 15 June 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0093413/