This film is billed as being 'loosely based' on an episode in the life of John Huston. 'Loosely based' is a misnomer as this film couldn't be about anything BUT John Huston, right down to Clint's attempt to imitate Huston's arch quasi-British-accented drawl. The episode is Huston's sojourn in Africa to direct a movie whose title is never mentioned in the film (the closest is when Clint-cum-Huston, asked the title, replies, "I don't know. The African something-or-other." A bit too coy). This pretense of not knowing the film wears thinner and thinner as we see the spitting image of the boat that was used in "The African Queen", and as two stars arrive who look and sound just like Kate Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart (but are not so named in the film). The 'Bogart' character, on the first day of filming, even wears a costume exactly like that H.B. wore in the movie. This is a docudrama about the making of "The African Queen" that is pretending not to be a docudrama about the making of "The African Queen." What is it pretending to be? I don't really know, as it is just a disjointed series of episodes that show us - I guess - what a wild and crazy guy John Huston was. But he is not, at least in this movie, wild and crazy enough to sustain a whole movie. It has what appears to be intended as a 'tragic' ending, but it falls flat. There doesn't seem to be any point to the whole thing. Skip it. See "The African Queen" again instead.
Review of White Hunter Black Heart
