When you watch this, try to turn off your brain. Here we have a family, put into a Robinson Crusoe type of setting. They are squeaky clean. They never seem to have any dirt on them and they always seem to have all the necessities of life. It is implied that they managed all this themselves. Saying doesn't make it so. You'd also swear that the place they built had the Army Corps of Engineers to assist in the construction. It is a given that if we were put in this situation we would have to learn from scratch to do the work they seemed to do overnight. They all look incredibly healthy. They must have had a supermarket somewhere nearby because this is an island and nutrition would be an issue, even if they were careful. No one seemed to get sick. Anyway, I know it's just a fantasy and shouldn't be analyzed so much. But that's the reason it's so hard for it to have any sense of reality.

The only thing this movie lacks is Haley Mills. Apparently she was hanging out at the location with her dad when it was being filmed. Too bad old Walt didn't have her do a cameo as a mermaid or something. Anyways, this movie is way better than the book it is based on. I just finished reading it and all the Swiss family do is kill wildlife every other page. If the movie stayed true to the book there would not be much drive in the narrative. The book has no love interest, no pirates, no savages, no Gilligan. I'm sure in the future they will keep making versions of it, but this one sets the gold coconut standard of tropical island fun.

I used to watch this movie as a child and I enjoyed it. As a school teacher I recently had the opportunity to use the novel in my classroom. As a culminating activity we are watching this movie. Anyway, seeing it from this perspective puts things a little different.First of all the family is not named Robinson...the title was given as a reference to Robinson Crusoe. People complain of the ludicrous compilation of animals and the unlikely events...well that is how the novel was written. In fact the novel goes much further in its extremism. My biggest complaints come from the way that the movie departs from the novel. Eliminating the son named Jack was an odd choice from the start. They accelerated the pace of necessity since it is a movie and cannot contain as much as the novel but reordering events or making the mother (who in the novel was quite capable and contributed just as much to the family as everyone else) into a 1960's movie era helpless female did not serve the plot well. Turning Francis into the whiny little boy on screen just makes me want to pull my hair out. The overall spirit of the film is in line with the novel however and it is not a horrible movie to watch, it is actually enjoyable to watch. The value of this movie increases when I use it in the classroom because it opens up a lot of dialog comparing it to the novel and it really gets the students back into the book and trying to read for further understanding. On the whole it is a good classic Disney movie...it hearkens back to a time when Disney didn't totally screw things up (can we say Pocahontas?)...I'd recommend it, especially for young boys.

The family Robinson are sailing their way to New Guinea, but as a storm rages and they are attacked by pirates, they wind up shipwrecked on a deserted tropical island. Having no means of escaping the island they set about making a new life in the hope that help will one day come sailing past. However, as adventurous as it at first seems to be, peril and pirates are never too far away!Full of Disney's live action touches, Swiss Family Robinson triumphs as an entertaining adventure because it avoids heavy leanings towards sentiment. With a story of this type, sourced from the popular novel by Johann Wyss, it would have been an easy mistake to make, but with one tiny moment of treacle aside, it's funny, intelligent and up there for all the family to enjoy. 7/10