To All My Friends on Shore

I received this movie in the "50 all-star movie" collection box for $16.99, now avail as low as $10. (20 cents per movie!) A lot of little gems like this one, made for TV on TV budgets in the 1970's. Wonderful time-capsules to show our children and remember ourselves, that otherwise would be locked away.

We have a straightforward plot and characters, and Cosby's were very reminiscent of my grandparents that went through the depression and saved aluminum foil, rubber bands, and Christmas bows to reuse later. Good stories establish believable characters then have them resolve a conflict, but Cosby (the writer) may have pushed too hard in defining archetypes of the goal driven father, the status quo father, the torn mother, and frustrated son. I found the father's repeated gruffness irritating, but was guessing Cosby was playing a caricature of someone from memory. The son's illness may have been a little melodramatic, but the response and resolution in the last 30 minutes (which I won't spoil) was sweet without being saccharine and seemed to me somehow special yet reasonable for the man we had come to know.

This movie would not have won an Oscar, but I enjoyed it just the same.

Bill Cosby stars in this very serious drama about a working class man,his wife and their young boy. Cosby's father character (nicknamed "Blue") is trying to get his family out of the ghetto & into a house.

The couple discover that their son has sickle-cell anemia, leaving Cosby's character with the difficult & harsh task of telling his son the truth about his chances & mortality.

This is a $1 DVD,the film is straight from a VHS copy,the sound is awful (turn up TV almost all the way) and almost all the color is gone.

It's so old looking,it almost looks like the old educational films I used to see in school in that decade. Still,if you pay attention,you can see the good in the movie's storyline.

Some of the dialog is a bit daunting and irrelevant but this and the fact that this should be cleaned up and put on a professional DVD,are my only complaints. Otherwise,it's a great look at an very realistic struggling African-American family in that era. (END)

The film was clearly made for $3, or the equivalent of $3 in movie finances. It's very slow at times, but it really picks up once we learn the sons diagnosis.

While certain things date the film, such as the camera, fashion, and the doctors hair, it's still timeless in a way.

The film covers poverty, sickle cell, the ghetto, and father and son dynamics. The kids a sweet kid with angst since his family is poor. I think even todays kids could relate to him. The film did what it could.

This so boring. I do not know why any one would give the a 7 it is the most boring crap ever. It is just sad and boring. If you want get bored or sad then you might like. When see a movie I do not want to be bored. This movie bad written. It is about nothing but sad. And depressing. If you want be. Depressed when you see a movie them you might give movie 7 or higher. But not me sorry. I give this 1 out of 10. This is an awful and sad movie. Do not see it if you like good movie. A lot people do like good movies about monsters or ghost or killers that are scary. They like boring movies like this.

"To All My Friends On Shore" presents Bill Cosby in a light you've probably not seen in him before - in a dramatic production with no humor whatsoever. Since I've found many comedians to be effective at drama when given the change, I was looking forward to this. Added to the interest was that Cosby is not only credited with coming up with the basic idea for the movie, he also composed the music score. But in the end, the movie is kind of disappointing. Cosby keeps the same basic tone throughout - even when he learns his on screen son was taken to the hospital, he remains at the same tone! The first half of the movie is somewhat slow as well. Things do improve in the second half of the movie, with Cosby's character forced to change his way of thinking, and that is interesting. But the movie still suffers from technical goofs ranging from seeing the reflection of the cameraman to poorly recorded audio that makes it hard to make out what people are saying at times. Still, while this movie is somewhat disappointing, it's way, way better than "Top Secret", another dramatic turn by Cosby made six years later.