The African Queen

This is one of those movies you hear about a lot, even before you ever see it. What they never tell you is, it's kind of boring. This may have to do more with my own perspective, which has decidedly less interest in how two people feel about each other, and more about what people do. There's not a lot of doing in stretches of this film, though in the end the film makes up for some of those deficiencies with a clever and satisfying resolution. Part of the problem throughout probably comes from the lack of conflict between the protagonists; Hepburn and Bogart, in their characters at least, seem quite mismatched from the start. And then they get a little too into each other too quickly. A little more conflict a little deeper into the proceedings probably would have been more entertaining. (If this film were made today, the leads certainly would hate each other until at least two-thirds of the way through; what that may say about the difference between today and the 1950s is a topic for open discussion, to be sure.) It's also notable that, given the lack of clash with the two characters who share almost all of the running time by themselves, the movie frequently resorts to using the African setting (and its cohort of animals and natural perils) as a substitute for plot and interpersonal drama. That may have impressed audiences back in the day, but it's old hat now. Everyone else can be satisfied with this one as a classic, but I insist upon more than this.