Shipwrecked (1990)

Powerful

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

This film is a good example of how bowdlerizing a story to make it presentable to someone's fallacious misconception of "children" can render it useless to anyone of any age. For goodness sake, children are the most rough and raucous people around -- and if not that then at least as rough and raucous as any other cohort. That's probably in large part why they LIKE stories about sailors and pirates in the first place. A sailing ship is one place where no one washes, or changes his clothes, or needs to "watch his language." In this film no one ever even gets dirty, and even the pirates are POLITE! Of course the idea that, on an uninhabited island, one would pretty soon dispense with clothing altogether - well Heavens, we would't want children to even THINK about that. I would hope that anyone over the age of ten would have the good sense to be sickened by this one, even if they didn't know that patronizing them was the reason it's so bad.

I borrowed this movie because I assumed from the cover blurbs and photographs that it was based on the book 'The Coral Island', by RM Ballantyne. It transpires it is not and in fact owes more to 'Swiss Family Robinson' in particular, and 'Robinson Crusoe'.It is a good, honest representative of the South Sea Island castaway genre that is probably a vanishing category in these postcolonialist, postmodernist days. A film in which there are palm trees swaying is always worth watching. It contains toothless pirates, 'savages', and a cabin boy who is almost impossibly pretty.This is probably the most recent movie (1990) to have had the cheek to resort to one of the old favourites - a guy in a gorilla suit - into the plot. Of course, there are no free-range gorillas in the Fiji Islands, or anywhere outside of Africa, but who cares. What is more puzzling is that after the boy befriends the gorilla, it disappears from the film. I expected it reappear in the denouement, perhaps beating up pirates, but it doesn't. In terms of the plot, what was the point? My kids though the film was okay.

This is an old-fashioned seafaring yarn, with not much inspiration of its own. Among the many adventure stories / movies it makes reference to are "Captains Courageous", "Mutiny on the Bounty", "Treasure Island", "Robinson Crusoe" and "The Swiss Family Robinson". Director Nils Gaup handles the action well and the production values are suitably epic and colourful. The British / Swedish cast combine surprisingly well, though no individual player is outstanding.

This film could have and should have been better. The acting by the main characters is horrible. Hakon and Jens seem too self-conscious throughout the whole film. The girl is bad too. Unfortunately we don't see too much of her. Gabriel Byrne and the other supporting actors are ok. The plot points and action reek of Disney. The story is too wholesome for the subject matter. Oh well. I shouldn't expect too much from a Disney action/family adventure.