Dreaming of a good movie? This isn't it

This Kim Basinger star vehicle only shows her limitations as an actor, and she isn't helped by a boring script and weak direction.

By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 5, 2000

[Photo: Columbia/TriStar] I Dream of Africa, Kim Basinger proves that her Oscar win was a fluke. This boring story skims what would seem an ordinary life if not for the exotic surroundings.

Kuki Gallmann dreamed of Africa. The rest of us can doze through her movie.

I Dreamed of Africa is well-intended, poorly defined drama based on Gallmann's memoirs. If you don't know why she deserves attention, no clues are offered until a postscript reveals her conservationist work. She doesn't save anything during the film, as loved ones and wildlife keep dropping like tsetse flies.

Kim Basinger plays Gallmann, apparently believing her fluke Oscar for L.A. Confidential warrants a name-above-the-title project. I Dreamed of Africa is an appropriate choice for an actor still seeking respect, offering two graveside showcases and assorted pained expressions in noble surroundings. It's all so pat and flatly delivered that Basinger exposes her limitations rather than transcending them.

Basinger isn't helped by a feeble screenplay skimming a life that would be ordinary if not for Kuki's exotic surroundings. Each scene forces the viewer to calculate how much time elapsed since the previous one, refusing to develop crises into anything making us care about the characters. At the same time, director Hugh Hudson dawdles to arrive at tragedies foreshadowed ad nauseum.

By the end of the film, there is no discernible excuse for Kuki to stay in Africa, for advocacy or otherwise. Basinger's voice-over mentions some great epiphany, but we haven't seen it. The real Kuki must fill in the blanks with her book, since Hudson's compression of facts fails.

I Dreamed of Africa begins in Venice, Italy, where Kuki is a socialite involved in a car crash. (She is also Italian, but Basinger ignores the accent.) Kuki marries the driver, Paolo (Vincent Perez), although their bonding is the first casualty of Hudson's dramatic haste. We learn that Paolo owns land in Africa when he asks Kuki and her son Emanuele (Liam Aiken) to move there.

Before you can say "Busch Gardens," Kuki is living a travelog in Kenya, smiling at vistas and frowning about Paolo's long hunting trips with his drinking buddies. A little soft-focus sex and a ham radio smooth things out. People keep mentioning poisonous snakes and treacherous roads. Paolo declares his desire for a baby and, boom, Kuki is in full pregnancy bloom.

Someone gets bitten, someone gets carjacked, and after one recuperation scene everything is normal again. Then comes more scenery and more problems with snakes and brakes. Kuki remains more resilient than Basinger can play, but those poetic eulogies were just too meaty to pass up.

This film is too earnest about conservation issues it barely explores. Kuki cringes at the sight of butchered elephant and rhino carcasses like anyone else, but what makes her take the steps described in the postscript? Africa certainly doesn't do her any favors, so why does she pledge her allegiance in the end?

Basinger is interested only in cultivating her image as a serious actor, and Hudson is happy to be working 19 years after his first, best film, Chariots of Fire, which was fairly dull. Africa is their prop, not their purpose, like it must be for the real Kuki. Meryl Streep is safe, Hudson gets paid, and Kuki Gallmann probably does more good in one minute than this film does in two hours.

• Grade: C-
• I Dreamed of Africa
• Director: Hugh Hudson
• Cast: Kim Basinger, Vincent Perez, Eva Marie Saint, Liam Aiken, Garrett Strommen
• Screenplay: Paula Milne, Susan Shilliday, based on the book by Kuki Gallmann
• Rating: PG-13; violence, profanity, sexual situations, brief nudity
• Running time: 114 min.