Product Details

• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: A&E Home Video
• DVD Release Date: July 26, 2005
• Run Time: 50 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0009IXRIU
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #27,767 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Joint portrait of the patriots who played a pivotal role in the American Revolution. John's passion and eloquence convinced the colonists to fight the British, while Abigail supported John's efforts from the home front. Their life together remains one of America's most enduring love stories.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gives the Adams' their proper due as true American patriots, October 20, 2005

By	Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a wonderful Biography production, drawing upon a number of impressive Adams scholars and modern politicians (including David McCullough, Adams' most famous biographer; Joseph Ellis, author of Founding Brothers; a couple of Adams' descendants; and President George H.W. Bush). Not only does it tell the story of a vastly underappreciated Founding Father, it lauds his wife as an equal and contributing patriot in her own right. The story of John and Abigail Adams is really a unique one in American history; it is a great love story on two counts - love for one another and love for country. The production probably goes a little bit too far when it seems to imply that the Revolution may not have happened had John not met Abigail, but it does do a great service in righting the wrong that has all but expunged John Adams' name from the story of the Revolution. Today, he is remembered as the second President of the United States, and a rather poor one at that. Adams was clearly a very stubborn man, and his uncompromising insistence on doing what he thought was right did not make any friends among the politicians in Congress. Worst of all, he signed the Alien & Sedition Act (partly, this video suggests, at the urging of his wife who was tired of seeing him pilloried in the press), and this dangerous infringement on the rights of a free press has left a pretty dark stain on his record.

Most of this video deals with Adams' life before he took government office, and it does a superb job of educating viewers as to Adams' integral role in the fight for independence. After covering his early, Puritan upbringing, the story takes us through Adams' early life of self-doubt, his marriage to a woman that erased all those doubts, and his rise from a small-town lawyer to a leading voice on behalf of independence and revolution. Significant time is spent on his years away from home - first in Philadelphia at the Continental Congress and later in Europe on diplomatic missions. Abigail was left to oversee the farm, raise and teach the children, and watch out for British soldiers. Rather than run and hide, she boldly watched the events going on around her, including the Battle for Bunker Hill itself, reported all of her observations to her husband, and in a real sense served as "the eyes of the Revolution" to the delegates at the first Continental Congress. Husband and wife wrote voluminous love letters to one another throughout their many hard months apart, and one marvels at the intelligence, mental fortitude, and patriotic courage of Abigail. She knew her countrymen needed John Adams, even when she was pregnant with her sixth child, and she was the rock who encouraged and enabled him to always do his duty and serve his fellow man.

Had John Adams never taken up politics in the new American republic, his legacy might be much weightier than it is today. His speech to the Continental Congress on July 1, 1776 helped rouse the delegates to finally vote for independence the following day; his constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (which he wrote in one week) was an obvious precursor of the U.S. Constitution that came ten years later; and he was there in Paris beside Ben Franklin when the Treaty of Paris was signed to end the Revolutionary War. Looking back at my early school years, I can hardly recall John Adams' name even being mentioned alongside the likes of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison in discussions of the roots of American independence. If more Americans could see this video, Adams' greatest claim to fame would no longer be the timing of his death (hours after Thomas Jefferson's, both on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence) - it would be his life, for he and Abigail were true American patriots of the highest order.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars One Big Problem..., January 18, 2006

By	Samuel Ross "Skeptic" (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The DVD cover should have Abigail and her husband John Adams on the front. But instead it has Abigail and HER SON JOHN "QUINCY" ADAMS on the front. What knucklehead approved this?

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A bad cover, October 12, 2007

By	Matterhorn Magic "William" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Though I plan to watch the video later, but clearly the photo shows John Quincy Adams, the 6th president, and not his father, John Adams, the 2nd president.

Did somebody do their homework?