Krippendorf's Tribe (1998) 2 1/2 stars out of 4
Krippendorf's Tribe is an old-fashioned piece of fluff from Touchstone Pictures, one of the Disney studio's subsidiaries.
This is no coincidence, as the movie has that quaint kind of feeling as if it were from the old Disney factory of the late 1950s or early '60s. Only, to accommodate the '90s, this film adds a few profanities and a hint of sex.
Otherwise, 40 or 30 years ago, this comedy could have starred Fred MacMurray or Dean Jones, instead of Richard Dreyfuss. And someone such as Suzanne Pleshette could have played the Jenna Elfman role, while Annette, Tommy Kirk or Kurt Russell and little "Moochie" would have nicely filled the roles of the professor's children.
The slight story is about ant anthropology professor who, after the death of his wife-partner, goes through burn out. Instead of using his grant money to find a lost tribe of aborigines in New Guinea, he spends the money on food and to make house payments.
Comes the day of his long-awaited lecture concerning the discovery of his lost tribe, and poor Professor Krippendorf, at the prodding of a pushy former student-turned-anthropologist (Elfman), pulls himself together long enough to con his way through his talk in which he creates a fictitious tribe, the Shelmikedmu, named after his children, Shelley, Mickey and Edmund.
The entire fluff snowballs, as things usually do in such comedies, until the professor drafts his kids into being the "natives" he filmed on his expedition by faking scenes in his own back yard.
The rest, of course, is predictable, but that does not diminish the movie's fun. Familiarity, in this case, does not breed contempt, but rather a comfortable expectation of what's ahead.
The performances are a bit over the top, especially those of Dreyfuss and Lily Tomlin, who plays his academic rival.
Elfman has an effervescent presence that carries over from her Dharma and Greg TV sitcom, only here she is more worldly and conniving than her small-screen counterpart.
Krippendorf's Tribe is a family film with several laughs and a few misfires. It's a junk-food movie that can be easily digested without fear of any after-effects.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or at cbloom@iquest.net
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews