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Popular Culture Review
“Kenya is portrayed as a sort of rough resort, and the thorny
questions behind issues like conservationism vs. cultural
insensitivity don’t get looked into.”—Oregonian
“Enjoy all the scenery while you’re yawning.”—South Florida
Sun-Sentinel
“I’m beginning to suspect that Basinger’s Academy Award
winning turn in L.A. Confidential was a fluke.”—Palo Alto
Weekly
“They don’t revoke Academy Awards, do they?”—Kansas City
Star
“Watching I Dreamed o f Africa is like watching paint dryexcept that the paint never actually gets dry.”—Orlando
Sentinel
“Could be likened to the pace of a funeral dirge.”—Movie
Parables
“A Meandering Mess.”—Film.com
“/ Dreamed o f Africa may very well be the lowest descent in
Hell I’ve taken thus far in my years of cinematic
experiences.”—Ain 7 It Cool Movie Reviews
“Even in the most picturesque segments of I Dreamed o f Africa,
a film that often has the feel of an epic travelogue, something is
missing.”—New York Times
“A dream of a substantial production; a wisp of a movie that
dissipates the moment you leave the theater.”—Miami Heralct
In addition to the bad filmmaking, reviewers were also quick to pick up
on neo-colonialist, neo-imperialist, and racist themes in the film; fifteen years of
deconstructing Out o f Africa saw to that. Roger Ebert wrote that, “It’s strange to
see ‘I Dreamed of Africa’ at a time when the papers are filled with stories of
white farmers being murdered in Zimbabwe. Here is the story of an Italian couple
who move to the highlands of Kenya in 1972, buy a ranch near the Great Rift
Valley and lead lives in which Africans drift about in the background, vaguely,
like unpaid extras. Is it really as simple as that? The realities of contemporary