Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

narnia4 Leave it to Beaver has been somewhat maligned for representing an idealized, almost utopian view of the 1950's (although half the episodes aired in the next decade) where everyone is in his place... the sons go to the school dances and participate in sports and take the girls out on nice, proper dates (as well as always addressing their father as "sir"), the father goes to work and comes back to read the paper, and the wife is in, you guessed it, the kitchen. Among certain circles "June Cleaver" is seen as a dirty name.If you watch the series, however, the show is much more than its reputation. Ward and June Cleaver are not the perfect parents, they are merely very good parents. It almost should be remembered that the world is seen through the eyes of Beaver Cleaver, the show's star. Keeping that in mind, it shouldn't be a surprise that we rarely see the parents argue (and also why we never learn what Ward's job actually is) and the world in general is seen as a pretty friendly place. The family system is very idealized and it's refreshing to watch. The show has a nostalgic vibe no matter what the age of the viewer (my father was a toddler when it aired and I can still feel nostalgic about it) because it does idealize values that are still cherished by people all over the world- decency, honesty, responsibility, family... the Cleavers are great with all these things just about every episode. It's also a very comfortable show... it isn't aiming for laughs that will put you on the floor laughing, but it will consistently get a chuckle out of people.Because the Cleavers are idealized, some may see the show as "dated" because the 21st century has a more cynical approach to family. This is not to say that television that strives to show a realistic family situation is bad or wrong, only that showing an idealized version of the family isn't wrong either. What is often overlooked, however, is that many issues are addressed throughout the series run. Some things that may have been more acceptable in that era are frowned upon in LitB, and serious issues are dealt with throughout the series. Racism, alcoholism, divorce, and more that would surprise those who know the show only be reputation. Very often other children would talk about their father beating them (something Ward absolutely never did... not even spankings), and although these lines are often played for laughs there is a definite somber tone as well. And as a younger person watching the show, I see the same basic social issues being dealt with by Beaver and his brother Wally as kids and even adults deal with today. The things that Beaver or Wally do wrong every week (the show has one basic formula, but it works well) may seem small and petty in comparison to what many of us have done, but many of the same principles are involved in the reasons behind the wrong actions and the solutions. So in this way, Leave it to Beaver is both tremendously old-fashioned and relevant to any culture in which humans are involved.As far as specifics about the cast, they're all iconic characters with the nasty, conniving Eddie Haskell being one of the greatest TV character ever. Ward's wisdom is always a nice treat, and I believe that June Cleaver has more depth and strength than she's given credit for (there are a few times when you wonder who wears the pants in the family!). One of the biggest drawbacks of the show is the older Beaver in the later seasons. He's still saying the same lines that are supposed to be cute and innocent, the problem is Mathers wasn't cute and innocent anymore, he was a teenager. That's partly why the show finally ended with the cast moving on to different things.So all in all, it's a show that I can't recommend enough.

bkoganbing I fear that in the first decade of television too many of us still bear the scars of not having a family like the Cleavers. They were in fact the All American ideal of the Eisenhower years. All that was needed was a pet and I'm sure there were episodes in which the Beaver must have dealt with acquiring a pet.What a family they were, the hard working and wise father who always had time for his kids and their problems, the pretty mom who never looked tired after a day of housework without a thought of being anything other than wife and mother, and two model kids whose occasional problems were really trivial stuff. This kind of family was satirized so brilliantly in Pleasantville.Tony Dow as Wally the older brother got to be a teen heartthrob, one of the very first created by television. Jerry Mathers in the title role of Theodore 'Beaver' Cleaver was just shy of heartthrob status when the show ended its run. They were cute, but I don't think they were the heart of the show.Two things made it stand out. One was Hugh Beaumont, a father of strength and stability who was NEVER made out to be an idiot even if he occasionally got it wrong. I think the Dads out there might have learned some parenting skills from him. Of course that presumes their kids were like Wally and the Beaver. And he certainly didn't have experience with being the father of girls. That's a whole other mindset. But you can see why Barbara Billingsley fell for this guy.I think Leave It To Beaver would have sank without a trace if it hadn't been for Ken Osmond as Wally's friend Eddie Haskell. That accomplished tongue licker of the inner rear cavities fooled absolutely no one, but it was great to see him do his act every week. It was Eddie who inevitably got Wally and their other friend Clarence 'Lumpy' Rutherford in trouble every week. By the way Frank Bank was perfectly cast as a character named Lumpy, a good natured goof who just went along.Beaver had several different pals along the show's run. He had one teacher through grade school though, Sue Randall as Miss Landers. Good thing she taught grade school before these kids hit their puberty. I NEVER had any grade school teachers looking like that. She was also full of wisdom and could sense problems intuitively in her class.The Cleavers, the perfect All American family for the time.

daddykingpig I have never seen a full episode of this show. I was born in 1957 so it was on when I was little. I can't stand this show. Never have and never will I watch it. Most say this is a all American family comedy. Well it may be to them, but not to me. The beaver is down right a fool. Wally isn't any better. It is silly, and should be shelved forever. Compared to Gilligan's Island, Beverly Hillbillies and such it never will be anywhere near these classics. It comes on I turn it. I have seen the best and this ain't one of them. My hell would be having to watch reruns of this. I wish they had an anti-beaver league. I'd join in a heartbeat.

Pythe Every so often I sit down to watch this show with my mom whenever it comes on TVLand, and the thing that invariably surprises me is the serious edge to the silly humor. Leave It to Beaver has a Charles Schulz sensibility to it: while it's appropriate for all ages, there's a menacing subtext to it that you don't fully appreciate as a child. Parents interact with their children in the most horrendous ways, often talking down to them, yelling at them, selling them short, speaking ill of them, or in general being very condescending (especially Larry's mother, who is downright evil, and Lumpy's father, who is too obsessed with his public image to show any feelings of warmth for his son). Even Saintlike Ward and June are occasionally guilty of unnecessary harshness. Beaver's friends often relate stories that culminate with them being "clobbered" or smacked, leaving the viewer to decide whether they are exaggerating a very just punishment, as children are wont to do, or if their words entail literal physical abuse, which also wouldn't surprise me given the on screen behavior of many of the adults. When the kids aren't being abused, they're often completely ignored; being children, their problems are hardly ever taken seriously by grown-ups who simply don't remember how an apparently trivial matter can be a very real crisis in youth. As Wally often says, Beaver is "just a dumb kid" and is usually treated as such.This aspect of the show, however, isn't a bad thing. It's just another example of how writers of ages past had to often imply dark issues that censors wouldn't allow an explicit exploration of. In some ways, I prefer this more subtle approach to today's, which essentially involves graphic displays of every conceivable societal or familial dysfunction, overloading the senses with obvious depictions of misfortune.All that aside, I can only conclude by saying that Leave It to Beaver is still a fine example of strong sitcom writing, even though a lot of it appears silly or naive by today's standards. Some episodes (like the one where Wally gives Beaver a haircut) are simply uproarious. The show began to decline when Beaver hit puberty, mainly because the writers apparently couldn't adapt the zany situations to make them more appropriate for his age. Beaver became a 9-year-old trapped in a fifteen-year-old's body, still mindlessly spewing words like "golly" and "jeepers", still failing to think things through on the most basic level, still creeped out by girls and lost in a world of juvenile fantasy. You can't sell a show based on its cuteness factor when the youngest character is in high school. At least they had enough sense not to desperately introduce a toddler to the cast in the waning years so they could skirt by on cheap jokes and mispronounced words, unlike many other sitcoms that have clearly jumped the shark.This review is getting much more cynical then I really intended, so I'll just end it here. Make of it what you will.