Africa

The star, Dorette Potgieter (Vicki), is sure a pretty young woman that does a great job of acting the part.

In the beginning of the movie, she is at a club or something like that dancing. It is a very fancy and civilized environment. She soon gets frustrated about her life and wants to be alone for a few days. So she decides to drive alone across Africa. Of course she has a problem and ends up walking off into the wild and uncivilized part of Africa. The one thing I don't understand is why she walked away from the road. That makes no sense, but everything else seems logical. In the beginning she is not very rational but after a while she accepts that she is lost in the wilderness and begins to be more logical.

Although there is some nudity, it is only minimal.

A blonde fashion model -- not Charlize Theron -- is on a location shoot with her boyfriend and his crew in South Africa. They have a row. She decides to join him at another location by driving her car across the savanna. She almost has an accident with a truck and her car leaves the highway and flips over. The truck driver evidently has paid no attention because she comes to later lying alone next to her car. She staggers to her feet, wearing a skimpy blouse, a virtual skirt, and a pair of heels. The highway can't be more than twenty feet away. So she smoothes her hair back away from the rather becoming bruise on her forehead and decides to start walking off into the trackless veldt. Mistake number one.

The rest of this interminable thing consists of three basic parts. (1) She keeps walking away from the highway getting punctured by thorns and tracked by lionesses and monkeys. (2) Flashbacks to the more comfortable moments she spent with her boyfriend. (3) Her boyfriend being joined by her parents and searching for her. They don't find her but it doesn't matter because she keeps plodding along until she stumbles onto another busy highway, having acquired a very nice tan.

I don't know why this movie was ever made. The performances are uniformly rudimentary, the plot mixed up and boring, the character development nonexistent. None of that would matter much except that -- well, it doesn't matter what the heroine is doing -- falling into bushes, climbing trees, jumping off a cliff -- she always manages to keep her knees together. Oh, there is a shot of her emerging nude from one of those pools at the foot of a waterfall, but one ten-second shot does not a summer idyll make. And I guess you DO get to see zebras, monkeys, lions, hyenas, and a dead eland (which she eats part of). She eats a grub worm too, come to think of it, and drinks muddy water from a small pond that elephants have just used as a bathtub. The most unkindest drink of all. The Yir Yuront of Queensland in Australia consider witchety grubs a delicacy so I don't know what she's complaining about.

I won't bother going on about this. You have better things to do with your time than watch this. If not, you might consider macrame. Or try the London Times crossword. They tend to be very hard. Here's an example. Name a major seaport in the middle of Czechoslovakia. Answer: "Oslo." CzechOSLOvakia -- get it?

Well, the skimpily clad, high-heel wearing doofus drives alone thru South African jungle at night in an open Jeep, with no survival geer. Oh, she does have a cell phone, which she promptly tosses out when her boyfriend calls to check on her progress. After the crash, instead of staying on the one paved road, an obvious truck route, (a truck ran her off the road) for some dumb reason she wanders off deep into the jungle. In high heels. If anybody deserves to be eaten by a lion, Darwin says she's lunch. I hate to compare this tripe to the classic 'Walkabout', but that movie really showed how the 'city kid lost in nature' plot device was excellently done. This whole movie shoulda got lost in the jungle.... Oddly, unlike the 'Naked and Afraid' people, survival specialists all, this woman never had a problem making fire. Weird how that happens.....

Thought the scenery and music to the movie were great! I would but the Soundtrack if one existed, because I liked the African-themed music. The animals were cool, and the scenery of Africa is mysterious and awesome. You never know what animal is there to eat you. Man (or woman is not on the top of the food chain in Africa!)

The story and dumbness of the movie, not so much. The lead actress is a mess, and manages to survive despite easy things that could easily save her. The story ignores obvious thing that could have lead the lead actress to safety, and lack of common sense takes away from the movie. Writers should have spend a little more time detailing a better story than the framework the movie is built around, a hot, spoiled girl trying to survive in the wildness, unsung her past experiences with her Father to not give up.

Great scenes and scenery. Even a clever thing here and there. But buying into the injured fashion model becoming a survivalist in the African bush definitely meant some producers were influenced by a different type of bush to get behind this ridiculous premise. It's more survivable to get through than an American 80's movie like Iron Eagles with terrible sound track...this flick Africa has a decent sound track that fits the scenes, and you can keep trudging forward. Would have been better if the movie developed a female character that is the 'plain Jane' to show that superficial bimbos who have city culture manipulation skills would get eaten alive in raw nature, but that a practical woman might have a chance. Most guys will appreciate the skin exposure scenes but nothing is too overtly tasteless.