Review of In Search of the Castaways (1962) by Edith N — 22 Aug 2009

With Random Maurice Chevalier Action!

Now, Disney has adapted Jules Verne elsewhere. I indicate to you, with some delight, their version of [i]20,000 Leagues Under the Sea[/i]. (I have just read an explanation that, while even in French leagues the title indicated twice around the Earth, it actually in the original French means around the Earth, not under the sea.) You can't beat James Mason and his delicate malice. Lord knows they don't get anywhere near that here, though George Sanders has been good villains elsewhere--we've seen in him [i]The Ghost and Mrs. Muir[/i], [i]All About Eve[/i], and [i]The Jungle Book[/i]. (Disney does like its recurring casts!) And I must here confess that I've never actually read any Verne, though obviously I ought to. So I don't know; maybe it's that the book here just isn't very good. It wouldn't be the first time that an otherwise-great author wrote a real turkey; I could list for a while, if you'd like. However, for whatever reason, this movie is simply dreadful. Remember that I generally like live-action Disney stuff from this era, but sometimes, even an otherwise-great studio produces a real turkey.

Captain Grant (Jack Gwillim) is missing and presumed dead. His daughter, Mary (Disney's favourite, Hayley Mills), along with her brother, Robert (Keith Hamshere), and inexplicable French navigator Jacques Paganel (the abovementioned Chevalier) sneak onto Lord Glenarvan's (Wilfrid Hyde-White) ship to get him to sail them to wherever it is their father is. They've received a letter in a bottle from him, you see, and while it does include a line of latitude, so what if it doesn't include longitude? They set off for great adventures along with Glenarvan's son, John (Michael Anderson, Jr.), who is of course falling for Hayley Mills. They end up visiting all sorts of places they don't need to be and experiencing totally ridiculous adventures, badly projected behind them. Through it all, Maurice Chevalier sings cheerful songs, songs which are totally out of place to what's happening around them. And I don't just mean it's because songs at random moments are a Disney thing. Even by Disney standards, these make no sense.

And boy, are those adventures made of bad special effects. And totally improbable to boot. Now, I grew up in a very seismologically active region. Technically, I still live in one, but we get a lot more earthquakes back home. What's more, the mountain range I grew up seeing every day is the most unstable one in the world--it's falling faster than it's being built up. However, the basic outline of the hills remains the same from year to year. There's a notch in the mountains that used to be where I set my eyes if I was facing north and standing at attention for marching band in junior high. That notch was still there when I was home last, and I expect it to still be there for a very long time. However, if earthquakes back home happened the way earthquakes in the movie happen, it would have been gone between sixth and seventh grade. Whole huge chunks of mountain fall down, and Our Heroes slide on these chunks through ice caves (which don't collapse even when a chunk of mountain the size of a large office building falls away), and one of them is flown away by a giant condor, no less.

This really is awful. Hayley Mills does what she can, but there's not much to be done with what she has here. Maurice Chevalier swans about acting like Maurice Chevalier--it was his shtick and he was sticking to it. There's a delightful Crazy Old Man played by Wilfrid Brambell--beloved of Beatles fans everywhere, though he's not at all clean here--but he seems rather tacked on, and it does kind of start to wear thin; thanks Gods he's only in about the last fifteen minutes. (Though I have to admit that I missed such things as his character's introduction, as the library's copy stuck horribly in the middle, causing me to miss about five minutes of story. I don't regret the loss.) From what I understand, the love interest for Hayley Mills was actually tacked on by Disney, and in the book, Lord Glenarvan had in fact brought his wife, not his son, along for the expedition.

I don't think I can say enough in my attempt to dissuade you from watching the film. I must admit that there's a certain amount to be said for it on an ironic level--I found parts of it hilarious, such as the time they spend trapped in the tree during a completely inexplicable flood. Especially the part of that where Maurice Chevalier, honest to Gods, builds a cooking fire on one of the branches. (Later, of course, they are almost burned out of the tree when a lightning strike hits it and catches it on fire. Naturally.) It quickly wears thin, though. It seems as though Our Heroes are being pursued by an angry god, Odysseus-fashion, because not only do they start out on the wrong continent completely, but they end up in all sorts of completely improbable disasters on it before getting to the right continent and becoming entangled with gun-runners. So while the story of Odysseus is fascinating, this one is simply horrible. Part of it is that Homer was a better writer than whoever scripted this turkey. However part of it is that what happens to Odysseus is far more believable.