"The Mosquito Coast" reunites Harrison Ford and Peter Weir after "Witness," for which they both received Academy Award nominations. Ford's performance may make him a dark horse for such a nomination in this long-anticipated film however, Weir is unlikely to receive similar accolade. Best box-office prospects for this clamorous Warner Bros. release may be a few years down the road - whenever the country returns to a 60s-type, anti-establishment period. Right now, word of mouth will be poisonous.

Based on Paul Theroux's well-regarded 1982 novel, this film adaptation has brought to the screen some of the least appealing parts of the book's lead character, a brilliant but iconoclastic inventor. He rages against the phoniness of American life: neon, fast food, TV, pollution, crime and phony evangelism - in short, all the old and usual suspects. These may have been timely villains back when Jessica Mitford first wrote about planned obsolescence in the 1950s, but now they're just tired subjects. And, in Paul Schrader's heavy-verbiage screenplay they're just plain annoying.

On and on, a Hawaiian-shirted Ford spouts the evils of double-digit inflation and plastic consumerism. He's so fanatic about it, he's uprooted his family from their pastoral home home and lugged them off to a primitive jungle coast. He's filled with cockeyed, romantic notions on building a jungle utopia for himself and his family.

In this decision, as in all other decisions, the family, including his dutiful supportive wife (Helen Mirren), two sons (River Phoenix, Conrad Roberts) and twin daughers (Hilary Gordon, Rebecca Gordon) don't have any choice. Despite his sometimes brilliant and idiosyncratic observations on society, Ford's a complete dolt with people. For him, the pulleys, ropes and levers he ingeniously rigs up for his numerous inventions are the stuff of life. He even talks of his machinery in anthropomorphic terms - the kidneys of the system, etc.

Although Schrader has pitched his lead character with the shrillest of tones, he has distilled with some distinction the high comic spirit of much of the novel. Ford's existential determination to build a gigantic ice machine within the bowels of a primitive jungle is a wonderfully inspired screwball calling. The odd and bulky mechanism protruding from the foliage, dumping ice blocks into a jungle stream is a true and goofy philosophical symbol.

"Mosquito Coast" rambles on throughout, much like an out-of-control musical, as Ford exhorts his family and a swarm of happy natives in their construction of his jungle paradise. As they hammer, chop and drudge away, he rants at them about the evils of corporate America. And, this never lets up - the same points keep getting made and made.

Ford, it is clear, is just plain off-his-rocker. He's authoritarian, belligerent and insensitive - as unsympathetic a protagonist as you'll find. Why his wife (Mirren) just doesn't up and leave him is perplexing - surely this role takes the cake for passivity in a major female lead.

Through a voice-over, Schrader and Weir have attempted to distance the audience from Ford; in essence, to bring the audience into the family by making River Phoneix their surrogate. It doesn't work - the character is simply too overpowering and obnoxious.

To his credit, Harrison Ford gives a strong and inspired performance; yet, it is so forceful and unrelenting under Weir's atonal direction that it has capsized the whole film.

Among other performers, River Phoenix is outstanding as the perceptive oldest son, while Helen Mirren is shackled by her anemic role as Ford's beleaguered wife.

Technical credits in this Jerome Hellman production are not surprisingly excellent, in particular John Seale's broad-scaled photography and John Stoddart's beamed-off-center production design attest to Weir's impeccable visual eye.

By Duane Byrge
Daily Variety