Based on Jules Verne's 1868 adventure yarn Captain Grant's Children, the film stars young Hayley Mills (in her third role for Disney) and Keith Hamshere as Mary and Robert Grant, children of lost seaman Captain Grant. We join the children in media res as they attempt to board a ship leaving Glasgow, following a note they believe to be from their father, found in a bottle retrieved from the belly of a shark. The shark was caught by an eccentric geography professor, Jacques Paganel (played with overwhelming whimsy by Frenchman extraordinaire Maurice Chevalier,) who accompanies and encourages the children in their mission with an almost-sickening joie de vivre. The trio wins over the initial skepticism of the stuffy Lord Glenarvan (Wilfrid Hyde-White,) owner of the lost ship Grant captained, who agrees to ferry them to South America in search of the wayward Captain. Also along for the ride is Glenarvan's teenage son, John, played by Michael Anderson, Jr.
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| *GASP!* |
If the plot already sounds like a strung-together series of incredible strokes of luck, you haven’t heard anything yet. When people talk about the ridiculously over-the-top movies of such hyper-kinetic directors as Michael Bay or Zack Snyder, I say your Transformers sequels and 300s ain’t got nothing on In Search Of The Castaways. Once the film sets up its story, the action set-pieces start coming hard and fast. Finding themselves stranded in the Andes (courtesy of Peter Ellenshaw’s amazing visual effects,) the team is awoken by an earthquake that sends them careening down the mountain slopes on a large chunk of broken cliff-side! In the first of the film’s over-ambitious uses of stunt and model-work, this sequence goes from improbable to ridiculous once the group learns they can steer the cliff (!) by leaning left or right. Viewers are then treated to a series of shots of the (clearly) doll-populated miniature cliff-chunk zipping along the mountainside like a runaway bobsled. This sequence goes on for several minutes as our intrepid crew flies through icy caverns and slaloms around winding mountain paths. It eventually ends as the group smashes into a large rock, sending young Robert flying off the mountain – where he is then rescued by … wait for it … A GIANT CONDOR!
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| No, not that giant Condor. Get back in the car, Crawford! |
The presence of Maurice Chevalier as the sprightly Professor Paganel helps to keep the continuing series of (often literal) cliff-hangers from becoming too grim – though this soon becomes detrimental to the film’s believability. The film rapidly switches between wide shots of stuntmen (and the aforementioned dolls) being jostled violently about, and close-ups of the elderly Chevalier and Hyde-White bobbing and weaving in front of a projected background. Much of the action already requires a great amount of suspension-of-disbelief, but when Chevalier then begins singing one of a series of airy Sherman Brothers songs in the middle of the chaos, one tends to lose the thread of belief completely.
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| Sacrebleu! Une petite omelette, mon amie? |
A perfect example comes later in the film, as our heroes find themselves stuck in the branches of the single giant tree (!) in the middle of a wide desert (!) deep within the Andes (!) that’s been completely flooded (!). The party is stranded with dwindling food supplies and Lord Glenarvan is apparently ill with pneumonia, but Paganel manages to lift everyone’s spirit by serenading them with Disney-compilation mainstay “Just Enjoy It.” I understand that half the reason for casting the beloved French entertainer was to showcase his singing talent, but perhaps the necessity of adding jaunty songs to an otherwise nerve-racking adventure film goes against the spirit of the story? The most thematically appropriate song (and a lovely tune in its own right) is the lilting “Castaway,” sung by Mills’ character in one of the films’ few quiet moments. Chevalier’s songs seem to exist merely to act as a stop-gap between frenetic set-pieces; see how the action picks right back up following “Just Enjoy It,” as the troupe is rapidly attacked by a jaguar on a floating log (!) before a bolt of lightning sets the tree on fire (!) and the whole kit-and-caboodle is then sucked up into a water-spout (!).
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| Is that a guitar under your poncho, or are you just happy to see me? |
Before the whole tale is spun, our protagonists proceed to encounter friendly natives, rescue the wrong sailors and end up traveling to the opposite end of the Earth to battle gun-runners and a tribe of cannibals in New Zealand, until they eventually rescue Captain Grant (played by an impressively-bearded Jack Gwillim) – after fleeing from an erupting volcano.
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| Oh Christ, what now...? |
At turns entertaining and frustratingly uneven, 1962's In Search Of The Castaways feels like a bizarre spiritual-sequel to Swiss Family Robinson. Harrowing adventure and perilous cliff-hangers are continuously amped-up higher and higher, until one can’t help but shake their head and laugh. The whole thing is next-level nuts.
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