AllMovie

If there's one thing worse than a homeless bum, it's a whimsical one. Whimsy overflows like cheap wine in David S. Ward's screen adaptation of John Steinbeck's novellas Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. The lovable, soft-hearted characters -- the bums, the whores, the shopkeepers, the dull-witted -- who have taken up residence in the abandoned sardine canneries on the California coast near Monterey, all cavort on the colorful Cannery Row setting as if it were a new Disney theme park.