Review of The African Queen (1952) by Forrest P — 03 Apr 2010

The African Queen was host to two wonderful acting legends--Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Audiences would expect nothing but genius performances out of both of these acting greats, and that's exactly what the audience gets.

But the chemistry these two share is magnificent, even though their characters' personalities and even their acting styles were completely different. Katherine Hepburn's acting was amazing. Half the time you could sincerely tell what was going on in her character's head just by looking in her eyes. Indeed, there is a scene where Humphrey Bogart is drinking some gin and she gives him a look that outright shows how extremely disgusted she is. The audience feels her disgust even though words never pass her lips. Bogart, meanwhile, plays a wonderfully charming, yet reclusive character that the audience can't help but like. Plus he gives a terrifically funny drunken performance at one point.

The African Queen was quite the passionate movie. We really expected these two characters to fall in love from the very beginning, but we didn't realize that it would take over half the movie to get them there.

Furthermore, this picture had one of the best screenplays I've ever heard from a movie. I felt like these are the ways people would really talk. There have only been a handful of other movies that I felt have really pulled this off (including Juno and Casablanca).

I won't say there's no part in this movie that was cheesy or cliched, because there was, but I will say that the picture was handled so well that it pulls it off favorably. However, there were two deus ex machina moments in the movie that really bugged me. I won't give them away, but I do think that it was a tad bit of laziness to have two moments like this.

The rest of the movie I really enjoyed and there are two reasons for this. First of all, I loved the way Hepburn's character makes a decision to destroy a WWI German ship with Bogart's little boat and how determined she is to see this through. Second is the love connection that happens between these two characters and becomes steadily stronger as the movie progresses.

This is one of those pictures that I really have a hard time finding fault in. It wasn't the greatest movie I've ever seen, but it certainly has a lingering effect on the audience, whether they're looking for adventure, love, or both.

8/10.