Product Details

• Actors: Michael Benz, Betsy Brantley, George Baker, Bernice Stegers, John Castle (II)
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, Live, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• VHS Release Date: November 4, 1997
• Run Time: 360 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0793960282
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #272,621 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

If Little Lord Fauntleroy is a crusty, curmudgeonly sort of book, the BBC film adaptation is even crustier. For here, among these 100 overstarched and often overacted minutes, are more frown lines, furrowed brows, and pasty complexions than you can shake a Victorian walking stick at. It's not that the story isn't compelling. True to the Frances Hodgson Burnett classic, a humble and kindly 10-year-old boy living a hardscrabble life alongside his widowed mother in 1870s New York is dispatched by England's Earl of Dorincourt, his dreary and shrunken-hearted though fabulously wealthy grandfather, to claim his title--he shall be Lord Fauntleroy. This is to the old man's distaste, as he is of the opinion that unmannered scum dwells across the pond. Worse for young Cedric, his mother is relegated to a cottage outside the castle, where he is to live. Predictably, the ingenuous lad, a real gee-whiz kind of a kid, soon lights a fire beneath his grandfather's frosty heart. Right when things begin to feel warm and fuzzy, though, another foul American, this one a shameless social climber and pretender on her son's behalf to the lordship, elbows her way in, aiming to conquer the castle. Fortunately, a couple of good ol' boys from back home bust a move to blow her cover. Morose moods aside, what whacks away at the modern viewer's funny bone is the cast's brittleness. Everyone's too cut and dried, too black or white, either beaming beatifically or incapable of cracking a smile. Still, don't count this version out if you're a big Burnett fan, or if certain children in your family display drama queen or king tendencies. -Tammy La Gorce

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Little Lord Fauntleroy (Ricky Schroder version), November 19, 2000

By 

dave felder (bellevue, ohio United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Lord Fauntleroy [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I have also seen this version of the movie and it is the best version I have seen. We enjoyed it with our children years ago and were hoping to purchase it for them as a Christmas Present. If it becomes available or someone knows where it can be purchased let us know.

33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A movie, not the mini-series, February 17, 2006

By 

Cynthia T. (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Little Lord Fauntleroy (DVD)

When a book is made into a mini-series, I'd like to buy the actual mini-series. If you're like me, and don't look carefully when you buy...you realize too late that this is an edited version of the original hit BBC mini-series, cut down to movie length. How would you feel if when another classic BBC adaptation of the same year, 1995, "Pride and Prejudice" was offered for sale, it was edited down to half its original length? It would be unacceptable, right?

Well. That's what's happened here. The "Little Lord Fauntleroy" mini-series was 300 min. This DVD is 170. Do the math.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Remarkably Good, July 4, 2006

By 

Earle Howe (Lansing, Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Little Lord Fauntleroy (DVD)

This film version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic remains gratifyingly true to the book. The acting is uniformly excellent. Sets, music, direction are all top notch. I actually have only two complaints - one small, one more substantial. Small complaint - Cedric's hairstyle. Larger complaint - for no reason that I can discern, they eliminated the episode where Cedric gives the crippled boy a ride into town on his pony and arranges to buy him a crutch. Since this is the first evidence the villagers have of Cedric's kind nature, it makes no sense to exclude it. (If V. Dann's review is correct, and the original was actually much longer, this would help explain the exclusion of that scene - although I can't imagine what they'd have done with an additional two hours. Except for the scene I mentioned, the story is fully told.) I rate this version at least as good as the Ricky Schroeder/Alec Guiness version (my personal favorite - when will that ever be available on DVD!?), better than the Mary Pickford version, and I need to see the Freddie Bartholomew version again to adequately compare.