Follow the River
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DVD details
Actor: Eric Schweig, Sheryl LeeBrand: PLATINUM DISC LLC
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 93 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-03-01
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Platinum Disc
DVD Reviews of Follow the River
DVD Review: Two ways to review this movie, and it fails both ways
Summary: 1 Stars
When looking at this movie as a stand-alone film it fails miserably. First off, its boring. There are two incidences of violence, both in the second scene, and one is actually not shownn (we hear the sound a man's voice get cut short by the sound of an arrow) so there is zero action in this film. Each scene is about two minutes long, so the movie is choppy. Basically two women, a man and a child are kidnapped by American Indians. They walk for two days to an Indian village, and Mary Ingles has an easy, perfect birth along the way.
Once there they meet an "old" woman. The old woman and the man have to run down a line of Indians who slap them with narrow strips of leather on sticks...oh owwie make it stop...(please note the sarcasm). It gives no explaination for this (remember I am viewing the movie as a stand-alone, not in reference to the book), so the whole exercise is superfluous. Then the family is seperated and divided among the Indians and French traders at the village.
A day or so later Mary abandons her family and runs off with the old woman to get back home to Mary's husband. After two or three days arduous journey where they whine non-stop about being hungry and fall into a one-foot deep river, they arrive home exhausted. And then someone in the make-up department put some leaves in Ellen Burstyn's hair.
Then the warrior that kidnapped them and divided Mary's family up came walking back into their front yard the next day with the two stolen children because of Mary's bravery (because she took 3 days to get back home).
This movie was weak, boring, and disjointed. They seemed to be afraid to offend Indians so they made them thieves with honor instead of the murdering thieves they were in the book. The most critical and important aspects of the "true" story were either ignored or glossed-over (the complete true story is unknown, the 2 books are based on handed-down tales from her descendants). I don't think this would even make it to the Hallmark channel, although Lifetime Movies is a possibility since they show Jackie Collins movies afterall.
When you compare this movie to the book of the same name, it drops to a zero-star review. The whole point of this story is that Mary and Gretel walked back home over a thousand miles of rough country without preperations and basically no provisions. They were bloody, bruised, starving and mentally ill when they arrived at their destination. Here are the important parts the movie misses:
When the Indians attacked the English settlement, they stole Bettie Draper's baby and played toss with it. One of the Indians smacked it out the air with his tomahawk then killed the baby by grabbing it by the ankle and smacking its head against the cabin. This is why Bettie held such a burning hatred for the Indians. But the baby didn't even appear in the film, so the source for Bettie's hatred is a simple gunshot wound. Good thing the director never bothered to play up that hatred, another missed opportunity.
Mary's mother was scalped at the English settlement and left for dead while she was protecting Mary's two sons. In the movie Mary has but one son (a fine Irish blonde??? son), and her mother did indeed die (off-camera) but from a broken heart from being scalped. So the Indians killed or kidnapped everyone from the settlement except her mother? Sounds hokey to me too.
After leaving the settlement they were placed on horse for the walk to the Indian village. But after a big hunting expedition everyone but the pregnant Mary was forced to walk, giving Bettie reason to hate Mary. Then Mary had her baby along the trail and would bleed for several days after. Finally the bleeding stopped and she chose to walk to. All-in-all it took a full month to walk to the village.
After their arrival in Shawnee town, they met the other captives including the aforementioned old woman. The men were stripped naked then forced to run the gauntlet. Except they Indians used sticks and whipped the runners as hard as possible and beat them unconcious if they fell down. Then the old woman and Bettie Draper were forced to run it naked. They too were beaten mercilessly. Again the movie missed out on this opportunity, the damage inflicted in the movies was a handfull of welts that could be calmed by blowing on them.
I'm not about to list everything here because the mistakes are far too many (or perhaps too few because the movie skipped so much of the events). The most important problem of the "adaptation" is the journey home. As I mentioned above it felt like two or three days long. In fact they walked for about three months straight, with almost no food, no winter clothing (no clothing at all by the time they got home, including their shoes), two blankets and one tomahawk. Along the way they starved, fought off wolves, fought off each other, and lost the tomahawk and one of the blankets. Near the end of the trip the old woman even attacked Mary in an attempt to eat her.
None of this was even addressed in the movie. The closest they came was as one point you realize they are down to the one blanket, but not even a mention along the way that the other one was lost (pretty important to me when walking through the mountains during the early winter). Mary arrived home with the tomahawk, weighing the same as when she left the Englished settlement, with her hair, dress and shoes just a little dirty.
This movie is a total failure to tell even a part of the story of Mary Ingles. This movie should have been less "Little House on the Prairie" and more "Last of the Mohicans." The only possible redeeming quality in this movie is Sheryl Lee's eyes. Don't just miss this movie, write your Congressman to pass a law banning movies this bad.
Description of Follow the River
Studio: Platinum Disc Llc Release Date: 02/28/2006 Run time: 93 minutesBestsellers in DVD
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