Je rêvais de l'Afrique

What's up with all these negative comments? Out of all the comments I read on this site, less than one fifth of them are positive. I may not be old enough to have seen a huge amount of movies, but I must say that as a 16 year old, I truly enjoyed this movie. Of course, certain moments were meaningless, some parts were a tiny weeny bit confusing, but you caught up with the story within the next two seconds. The acting by the whole cast was amazing, the scenery was gorgeous, hehe and so was Vincent Perez! The music was...um...well displaced at certain times, but overall the movie made me cry twice ( well many things make me cry so you might not want to take that into consideration ) the story was quite well constructed, the actors did a great job. (I have an enormous amount of respect for actors as I want to be one someday, so I do not believe that any performance can be bad, some can be improved in certain ways, but nothing is ever awful and only constructive criticism should be given to actors. As I've always been told: If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. A few of the people who commented on the performances should have been taught that.) I have given this movie a 9 out of 10. It may not be one of the best movies ever made, but not one movie has ever been absolutely perfect, and I truly think this one deserves much better reviews that it has gotten, although that is JMHO and everyone has their own, so I'm not dissing anyone's POV. Well that's all of my rambling for today ;)

When I read all the reviews I could about this movie, including specialized magazines, I thought to myself that Kim Basinger had a bad dream after the great LA Confidential, one of my favourite movies of the 90's.

Now that I've seen it, I believe that 'I Dreamed of Africa' was not well understood. This is a different movie, the story was written to show dramatic and common scenes of Kuki's life, trying to reveal that all dreams can bring nightmares. And Kim shows us that she's a mature actress, not only a sex-symbol. She had no glamour in Africa, but her sensuality is so natural that I thought to myself that she was the most beautiful animal in Africa.

This film deserved more positive reviews than it had. It's not worse or better than 'Out Africa'. Only different. And this difference makes it fabulous.

Boy this movie went to video quickly, and now I understand why. It nearly breaks my heart to have to give a thumbs-down to such a huge effort of making a feature film. However, it can't be denied that this movie fell apart from the beginning. I simply did not care about any of the characters and could not connect with them, no matter how I tried. And it's all due to the writing!

It seemed the actors were trying desperately to make up for that lack of continuity and motivation in the script, and so, often their performances seemed contrived, plastic, and/or over-the-top. I think under the guidance of better writing, these actors would shine like we know they can.

What happened to character development and motivation? Perhaps it died in the car crash at the beginning of the film? Was Kuki an American in Italy, or an Italian? Who was the lady that was with Kuki's mother, when they were trying to convince her to come home? Did Kuki and Paolo really love each other or not? Did the people working at Kuki's house become close with her? Kuki seemed oblivious to them. When did Kuki and Ema start speaking the language? It seemed they suddenly just knew it. Why did Ema want to leave to go to school? Kuki was digging a ditch to help out with the water supply, but then we never see any resolution to that situation. What happened??

One of the sweetest moments in the film for me, was when Ema connects with a little African boy, who obviously has a love for snakes too. He shows the boy around his house and introduces them to the snakes he has, and then we never see the boy again (!).

I also would have liked to see what was in the egg that was mentioned repeatedly within the story. Not having the resolution of that aspect (the egg) in particular, left me angry as the credits rolled.

"I Dreamed of Africa" did have interesting scenery and I believe talented cast and crew, but because the script was so bad, everything else really fell apart.

I Dreamed of Africa is a movie based on a true story about a woman who changes her and her son`s life when she goes to live to a ranch in Kenya with her second husband. Some parts of the movie do not make any sense, or they look incomplete. That is because they show how hard living in Kenya is; but they aren`t an important part of the story. Another bad thing about it is that it`s way to predicable: you know that something will happen to Paolo (Kuki`s husband) since the first time he goes away hunting; and every time Ema (short for Emanuel, her son) grabs a snake you prepare yourself for a funeral. It is a shocking movie and you may go out of the movie theater hating Africa; but it shows some important parts of the living difficulties in places like Kenya. Altogether I think that it was a worthwhile movie, specially for us Kenya lovers, and you can get to know amazing parts of African savannahs.

As someone who loves African scenery and doesn't mind ogling Kim Bassinger, either, I was looking forward to seeing this film. It turned out to be disappointing. The scenery wasn't nearly what I had hoped, certainly no "Out Of Africa," and the story was, in a word: boring.

I never quite understood, or was told, a number of things in here, such as how the leading lady "Kuki Gallman") in this movie and her husband, financially survived. He was out fishing and hunting with his buddies all the time and she was home building some sort of wildlife conversation. One almost got to the point of asking, "What's the point of this story?" outside of being some sort of travelogue. That's the feel I got; an overly-long documentary about living in Kenya. It gets boring quickly.

Given the circumstances and scenery, this movie should have been fascinating, but it tedious. I'm not surprised it flopped at the box office and video stores.