"The Journey of Natty Gann" (1985)

The Journey of Natty Gann (1985) is one of the first movies I remember my parents renting when our tiny Michigan town got a video rental store.  I don't actually have a clear memory of the first time I watched it, just that I did -- I remember really loving "that movie with the girl and the wolf," and asking my mom repeatedly what it was called, but she usually didn't remember.  

We rented it again a few years later, when my brother had a stomach bug, and he ended up getting so sick that my parents left me alone to watch the movie while they took him to the emergency room.  I was probably 8 or 9, and it was the first time I got to stay home all by myself.  (Don't worry, our town was 5 minutes away, I knew how to use the phone, and I knew how to call the neighbors who lived a quarter of a mile away if I had an emergency.  The '80s were a good time to grow up.)  

As a young girl, my interest in this movie was mainly centered on how cool it would be to have a wolf for a friend.  When I got to my tweens, my attention switched more to how gutsy Natty Gann herself is.  And in my teens and twenties, I focused more on how cute John Cusack is in this.  And, now that I'm in my mid-40s, I kind of just love the whole package!  And the music!  We'll circle back to that.

The Journey of Natty Gann takes place during the Great Depression, almost a hundred years ago now.  Natty Gann (Meredith Salenger) is a tomboy living in Chicago with her widowed father Sol (Ray Wise).  Sol has trouble finding work, like so many others, and when he hears about plentiful jobs in the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest, he decides he can't pass the opportunity up, even though he doesn't have time to explain to Natty that he is leaving.  He leaves her a letter and convinces their landlady to look after Natty, and then he has to leave.

The landlady is a bully and a thief, as it turns out.  As soon as Sol is gone, she decides to put Natty in an orphanage and pocket whatever money Sol sends for Natty's care.  She hits Natty and tries to keep her locked up until someone can take her to an orphanage, but Natty cleverly escapes and sets off for Washington State to find her dad.

The bulk of the movie is about Natty's journey, as you might expect, given the title.  She helps a caged wolf escape from someone who has trapped him to sell to a dog-fighting ring, and the wolf becomes her traveling companion.  Natty and Wolf (Jed) help each other out, sharing food and shelter.  Wolf also protects Natty from a man who offers them a ride when they are hitchhiking, but then tries to molest Natty.

Natty stumbles into a hobo camp and acquires another protector in Harry (John Cusack), a young hobo a few years older than she is.  Harry helps Natty and Wolf learn safe ways to ride the rails and avoid railroad enforcers.  

Natty's dad Sol is devastated when he calls the boarding house and learns that Natty has run away.  Even worse, her wallet is found under a train wreck, and he has no way of knowing Natty escaped the wreck unharmed.  Assuming his daughter died, he throws himself into doing the most dangerous logging jobs, obviously trying to work until something happens to end his pain.

I won't totally ruin the ending for you, but you do know it's going to end happily, right?  This is a Disney movie for kids!  From the '80s!  Obviously going to end well.

Also, Wolf doesn't die.  I'll spoil that for you.  He's fine at the end.  The dog who plays him, Jed, was a Northwestern wolf-Alaskan malamute mix who also starred in the 1991 version of White Fang opposite Ethan Hawke.  

Anyway, I said I would talk a bit about the soundtrack.  The score used in the movie is by James Horner, one of my BFF's favorite film composers.  But there is another complete score for this film that was recorded but not used, which is by Elmer Bernstein, who is my favorite film composer!  I have both soundtracks on CD, and they are both amazing.  I listened to Bernstein's on repeat while writing my book A Noble Companion because it was just exactly the jaunty outdoor adventure sound I needed.  You can listen to the James Horner soundtrack here on YouTube, and you can listen to a suite from Bernstein's rejected score here on YouTube.  

Is this movie family friendly?  I mean, it IS a Disney movie meant for kids.  It actually has a handful of cuss words, and there's some pretty dangerous stuff here and there.  Like I mentioned, there is some physical and emotional abuse toward Natty, and a grown man does try to molest her, though that takes the form of him trying to scoot her toward him in the cab of the truck he is driving while saying things about just wanting to be friendly.  His meaning is clear to an adult and teens/tweens, but smaller kids might not understand anything more than that he's trying to make her do something and she is struggling against him.  It's rated PG.  

This is my contribution to the Hit the Road Blogathon hosted this weekend by Quiggy at The Midnite Drive-In :-)