Bitten

I'm really not sure what compelled me to check out the 1986 film The Mosquito Coast, but I really wish I hadn't. It's all situation without any real story, a sequence of events without any drama.

Harrison Ford plays an inventor who has become fed up with life in civilization, so he picks up and relocates his family into the jungle of Central America. He happens upon someone who sells him the land of a small village, of which he becomes mayor. From there, many things happen -- though none quite coalescing into a narrative as such. He gets into a personality conflict with a local missionary. He invents a machine that makes ice, which the jungle natives have never seen. He starts to lose his mind and take on touches of a Messianic complex.

Plenty of events, but all of it phenomenally boring. I found myself almost nodding off a points. All I can think of to really commend the film is the appearance of a younger Helen Mirren as the main character's wife, and River Phoenix as his son. (You might say the one good thing to come of this movie was the idea to cast River Phoneix as Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.)

I'm rating it a D-, and advising everyone to steer clear.