Meryl Get Your Gun
“You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend.”

Kenya Feel The Love Tonight

Meryl Streep stars as Karen, a Danish woman who moves to Kenya in 1913 and marries her friend Baron Bror Blixen (Klaus Maria Brandauer) out of convenience. Predictably, the marriage turns chilly once the chummy chap continues to cheat. But things look up nonetheless for Karen. She hops aboard a soaring romantic ride with a pilot/hunter named Denys (Robert Redford). Then again, what goes up must …. well, you know.

Twenty years ago, “Out of Africa” won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and I wish I waited another 20 years to watch it. This movie of recollections felt geared towards a mature crowd and I failed to connect with it. I can confirm that the movie looks and sounds like an Oscar Best Picture. It’s darn epic-looking. John Barry composes a swell score and DP David Watkin photographs some stunning African landscapes. But you know what – I could’ve done without them if it made the movie shorter and faster. I watched this film in segments over the course of three days. It was hard for me to get involved, with the exception of the film’s final 40 minutes.

The best reason to see this movie is Meryl Streep’s performance. Her Danish accent seems right because she sounded like my Hungarian neighbor. I guess that’s close enough, eh? But then again, so what. We’re in no shortage of Streep’s display of talents to consider this movie a must-see. Frankly, I can’t wait to see her in the latest Robert Altman film after seeing her in the Oscar telecast. The woman is gifted, but not enough to salvage this 1985 movie. To be honest, I’m glad I saw it for the sake of having seen it. But I’m gladder I got out of “Out of Africa.”

Grade: C

CAST
Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Klaus Maria Brandauer
Screenplay by
Kurt Luedtke
Based on the books:
Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller by Judith Thurman,
Silence Will Speak by Errol Trzebinski
And memoirs by Karen Blixen as Isak Dinesan
Directed by
Sydney Pollack
Rated PG 2hours, 41 minutes