Best movie of this year hands down!

the audience applauded

Memorable, crazy movie

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This film overflows with Ford's traditional manly cuteness. By the time this film was made however, it had all become utterly corny and totally cliche - for example the drunken bar fight that always must include the traditional bits of friends hitting each other for comic relief and the presence of one guy standing calmly as the fight carries on around him. All that is missing is Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, and Jay Flippen,The story is a bit of a mess. While the main story is a good one, the silliness of the rest of it (which was aimed at society in an age when alcoholism and being falling down drunk was considered humorous) is very hackneyed.In the standard saloon / nightclub scene, had to be in nearly every film of the day, is odd because Dorothy Lamour speaks the lyrics instead of singing them. There are other oddities as well.Overall, the film might have worked in the early fifties, but it doesn't play all that well for modern audiences. As such, it is hard to give it a high rating, particularly in comparison to other films of the day, such as the endearingly funny Cary Grant film, Father Goose, which had a more modern and intelligent style and which shut the door on films such as Donovan's Reef. Considering that the Ford-directed comedy Mister Roberts had been made seven years earlier, it is odd that John Ford would trot out an old-style comedy as late as 1962.

Wonderfully shot Ford film with a lively look at the Pacific atoll life , including amusing scenes , humor , acting class , familiar drama , a love story and sentimental nostalgia with interesting character studio of a varied assortment of individuals . Entertaining and fun story with agreeable romance adding strong knuckles for spectacular fight between Wayne, Ford's favorite leading man, against brawling Lee Marvin . It deals with two WWII buddies Donovan (John Wayne) and Gilhooley (Lee Marvin , similar role to starred by Victor Mclagen) are supposed to share December 7th for their birthday and meet every years on a South Seas paradise to engage a perpetual bar-brawl until a stuck-up Bostonian maiden (Elizabeth Allen) appears to find her lovable dad (Jack Weston who played Elizabeth Allen's father, was only nine years her senior in real life) who has fathered a brood of intimate half-casts . This amusing , good-natured film contains Ford's usual themes as familiar feeling , a little bit enjoyable humor , friendship and and sense of comradeship among people . Interesting screenplay portraying in depth characters and brooding events with interesting issues running beneath script surface was written by James Edward Grant and Frank Nugent , John Ford's habitual , and based on the story by James Michener . Here Ford goes to an atoll in an evocative and idealized portrait , paintstakingly constructed , about life in an idealized Pacific island .The main heroes , Wayne and Marvin , are two mighty tough guys who break beer bottles , tables and brawling among them . As in a fight with Lee Marvin, John Wayne underestimated an uppercut , he crashed through a table and fell down and director John Ford decided to leave the scene in the movie . This rollicking film featuring a magnificent performance by whole casting and acting class mainly supplied by starring duo and an excellent plethora of secondaries . This is the technically last movie that John Ford and his favourite actor , worked on together, although Wayne later provided the voice-over narration for Ford's documentary Chesty: A Tribute to a Legend . Both of whom , swap the wide open spaces of the prairie for the spaces of a marvelous Pacific island . That's packed with many Ford's regulars a and familiar characters such as Mike Mazurki , Dick Foran , Mae Marsh , Chuck Roberson ,some of them are uncredited and Patrick Wayne, John Wayne's son, has a small cameo, he plays the Australian Shore Patrol officer that breaks up the final fight . Good and colorful cinematography by William H Clothier and evocative musical score in Hawaian style by Cyril Mockridge . This sprawling , brawling adventure story was well directed by John Ford in a personal style . It's a hight-spirited tale with a sensitive fresh-air feeling , and one of Ford's finest movies . Rating : Better than average . Well worth watching for John Wayne and Le Marvin fans .

Wonderful fun this movie but the miscasting is incredible!Wayne looks more like a grand-dad than an uncle to the kids.Lee Marvin steals the film with his superb cameo.Miss Allen is awfully mismatched with Wayne.In fact even Warden who played her father was many years Wayne's junior.Had he made this film 10 years earlier it might have been more plausible with the usual Maureen O'Hara.The story line is apt as well as the script.As usual Mr.Ford uses nature to good effect.A good roll-licking film for the die-hard Ford fans but no more than an escapist farewell to once an heroic star.John Ford probably was not aware of the tremendous changes there were going on.A younger,fresher actor to pair with Marvin would have done more justice.But in his lifetime there was only one man this director had in mind.John Wayne!

Having not seen "The Wings Of Eagles", I cannot say that "Donovan's Reef", the last collaboration between director John Ford and star John Wayne, was also their least. But "Eagles" would have to be remarkably bad to beat this."Guns" Donovan (Wayne) lives on a faraway island in French Polynesia which he helped liberate from Japanese occupation in World War II along with buddies "Boats" Gilhooley (Lee Marvin) and "Doc" Dedham (Jack Warden). Trouble comes in the form of Dedham's long-estranged daughter Ameilia (Elizabeth Allen), who travels from Boston to prove her father is not of fit moral character to own a piece of his family's fortune. Donovan hides Dedham's three native offspring by pretending they are his, to buy time while winning Ameilia over to the ways of the island and her father.There, I just spent more time on the plot of "Donovan's Reef" than the movie itself does! "Donovan's Reef" is a rambling mess, perhaps an attempt to grab all the comic relief bits from Ford's more serious films and build an entire movie around them. Either that or an excuse for Ford to throw himself a party in the Pacific. Beyond the arrival of Ameilia, nothing happens during the film's two-hour running time. Gilhooley and Donovan smash up the latter's bar, Donovan's Reef, while Gilhooley is chased by aging barfly Miss Lafleur (Dorothy Lamour). Christmas is celebrated in a rainy church. The French governor of the island (Cesare Romero) makes eyes for Ameilia.William H. Clothier fills the screen with some remarkable Hawaiian landscapes, and Allen gives her part, "Miss Bunker Hill" as Donovan calls her, more than it deserves. She also gives Wayne someone to play off of that rouses his better moments in this film, something that can't be said of any other member of the cast, including Marvin, who after a big build-up retreats to the background and acts drunk. Maybe he WAS drunk; it's that kind of film.Warden plays his part way too straight and Marcel Dalio as a French priest plays his way too broad. One of these guys is in the wrong picture; I think it's Warden. Ford plays everything too broad, with annoyingly repetitive musical cues and endless ceremonies. The island seems a haven for Ford's cinematic tics and idiosyncrasies. People don't walk anywhere, they file in tight parade, two by two. They also burst into sudden song, the same dreary number complete with arms waving in unison and invisible instrumental accompaniment. When Ameilia swims onto an empty beach in a revealing bathing suit, an unidentified character runs into the frame, throws her a towel, and runs out.What really annoys me is the script by James Edward Grant. We are asked to side against Ameilia because she took badly to her father's abandonment and because she is stuck up. Yet as soon as she's on the island, she's being abused by Donovan, doused in the ocean and then dragged across a beach. Grant liked his women being spanked and thrown out of windows, but here he really shoves your face in that, along with icky cute scenes featuring the Dedham offspring.If not for Allen and Clothier, "Donovan's Reef" would be much worse than it is. As it is, it's pretty bad, showing even the best of movie partnerships needed the right help to make something for the ages.