Rating: 
Summary: Two Great Actors Make A Great Movie
Review: Can two people carry an entire movie? When the two are Humphrey Bogart (who won an Oscar for this performance) and Katherine Hepburn (who did equally well but didn't get the Oscar), the answer is a resounding, "Yes!" Bogart plays a beaten up riverboat (the "African Queen" is his boat) captain in Africa at the onset of World War One. b Hepburn plays a spinster missionary who assists her brother, Robert Morley, in converting the locals to Christianity (or, at least, helps to get them singing hymns, whether they understand the words or not). After the Germans burn the church and kill her brother, Hepburn escapes with Bogart down the river aboard the African Queen. With memorable scene after memorable scene (leech attacks, German attacks, shooting the rapids and then shooting THE RAPIDS, disappearing tributaries, black fly attacks), John Huston directs these two veteran actors through a classic movie. Bogart starts off with many rough edges but gradually gets slightly tamed. Hepburn starts off very prudish, but gradually loosens up. They go from hating each other to getting married in a very predictable, but still realistic way. Adversity is the mother of romance. Buy this one and watch it every year (or more often) on a rainy afternoon or snowy evening. If it's a snowy evening, you might even feel better about the snow afterward.
Rating:
Summary: One Of The Very Best
Review: Bogart and Hepburn play two diametrically opposed personalities in this classic film set during World War I. She is a prim and proper, middle-aged English missionary. He is a gin-soaked river rat living by trading up and down the Congo River from a ramshackle old steamboat named The African Queen. They are thrown together by a German offensive that leaves them isolated and in danger of being captured and held as prisoners of war (or worse, they could be shot as spies). To escape, they must travel down the river past the Germans. What follows is part comedy, part tense drama, and part high adventure. The river and its wildlife pose as much of an obstacle as the Germans, and Bogart and Hepburn must not only learn to get along, but to trust in, and rely on, each other to survive.This is a wonderful movie. The acting is superb (Bogie got an Oscar for "Best Actor"), the story is excellent, and the scenery is beautiful (it was shot on location). They just don't make make them any better than this, and I can't imagine any reason why anyone would NOT want this in their collection. Very highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful movie
Review: A movie about second chances. I have never been a fan of Hepburn's movies, yet this movie showed me just how good she personally is. Bogart played a different character than his past movies allowed, and it was really impressive-warm, open and very human-made all the more so by the knowledge that Bogart was not far from death from cancer, just a few years later. The movie is so good, the performances so real, and even a bit of luck thrown in only enhances the feeling one has while watching the film. I think that every human emotion is explored in this film, it really brings you in...desperation, love, happiness, and gratitude. Perhaps Bogart's best-and Hepburn was dazzling. Fleeing/chasing the Germans in WWI Africa never looked so good, never has been so fun! Forget about Apocalypse Now's trip up the River, facing the unknown while on the hunt against evil-this movie is so much better. Watch it!
Rating:
Summary: The African Queen : Bogart and Hepburn in Perfect Harmony
Review: The African Queen is one of my all time favorite movies period.I was very young when I first saw this movie and marvelled later when my youngest son sat glued to the tv, in wonderment at this ragged steamboat and the adventures it sailed its two passengers into, for the steamboat is a third character in this movie, very broadly based on C. S. Forester's novel, set in WWII Africa and director John Huston directs with a sure hand with I imagine injecting humor that is not in the book. The great writer James Agee conributed to the scipt (an suffered a heart attack playing tennis with Huston but lived to finish the script) and the meeting and mating of the gin-soaked steamboat captain (Bogart) and Christian missonary (Hepburn) clash at first but slowly but wonderfully touching and funny find each other and need each other for survival, love and even high spirits. Filmed in Africa with beautiful cinematography. Of interst are the book wrote by Hepburn about her adventures making the African Queen and the novel "White Hunter, Black Heart" by Peter Viertel, then husband of the actress Deborah Kerr, whose barely fictionized portrait of John Huston was filmed by Clint Eastwood. But those are only stories to sidetrack you. The movie itself is a precious, funny, adventure, well-acted and directed and a true classic that can entrall the whole family. A great film.
Rating:
Summary: I was never a big fan of the "classics"
Review: ...but I love this movie! Well-acted, spectacular scenery and a few unexpected surprises -- this movie holds up very well after nearly 50 years. Okay, to the plot -- Charlie Olnutt (Humphrey Bogart) is the carefree, Canadian gin-swilling skipper of the "African Queen", a beat-up mail steamer that plies the rivers of East Africa at the beginning of World War I. Rose (Katherine Hepburn) is a prim British missionary, who hitches a ride with Olnutt when her missionary brother dies after an encounter with German soldiers. However, the two have very different ideas on how to proceed. Olnutt is content to wait out the war in a remote spot along the river. Rose believes the two should somehow contribute to the war effort. Eventually, the pair agree to rig the African Queen with two homemade torpedoes in order to destroy a large German steamship which is prowling Lake Victoria. But getting to the lake just as dangerous. Charlie and Rose find themselves battling deadly rapids, crocodiles, leeches, a German fort and each other on their journey. My favorite scene is when Charlie calls Rose a "skinny old maid". Rose's chin quivers, but then she collects herself -- and makes Charlie pay. A very memorable movie that is well worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Two entire hours of film with lots of acting it it.
Review: I just recently had the opportunity to watch 'African Queen' and found it quite interesting...for many reasons. Firstly, it was quite long...almost seven thousand two hundred seconds! How do makers of such long movies expect us not to get antsy and all fidgety? I managed to keep myself busy while watching by drinking coffee. The second point I'd like to make about this movie is that it is apparently set in some other country...and at some other period of time. I mean, can't we be a little more realistic if we're going to go to all the trouble of making long movies that we have to drink coffee while watching to keep from being fidgety? Where was it set? Africa...a country real far away full of people with much better tans than us and some white people who keep either getting killed or seem to want to kill each other. How realistic is that? I digress. The story is this; some guy with a steam-powered bass boat who delivers mail and supplies and drinks too much and acts the same way in every movie he's in stops at a mission (which is sort of a church summer camp in the middle of nowhere where they try to convince the natives that worshipping sticks and mud is bad unless it's in the shape of a cross) with some bad news for the church folks within (Brother something or another and Sister Kenny, I think). It seems world war one has broken out. Where do they get this stuff? Well, they politely invite him in for lunch, sit awkwardly exchanging pleasantries while Mister All-nut farts and blames it on the dog. He leaves but returns later when he realizes he forgot his pager and finds the mission in a shambles on account of the war going on. Brother something or another is dying and Sister Kenny decides to leave with All-nut on his steam powered bass boat and for the rest of the movie they steam all over Africa getting shot at and Mr. All-nut gets falling down drunk a lot because Sister Kenny is so ugly and has PMS and is way to enfatuated with god. She dumps his hooch overboard and he falls in love with her. Right. Luckily the end is close by...they tow the bass boat through leech infested water, make some home made torpedoes (it gets even better) then get married on the enemy ship they later torpedo inadvertently! Man, I must admit, I couldn't have made a better version if I'd dug up the starring cast, brought them back to life and filmed the entire thing in Africa with my camcorder and got all the blank tapes and camcorder batteries I could use for free. I mean, it looks almost real and the special effects...wow! And Bogart looks almost life-like.
Rating:
Summary: Gloriously Entertaining!
Review: Two of Hollywood's Best Actors; Katherine Hepburn and HumphreyBogart give brilliant performances as Rose and CharlieAllnut. Beautiful African locations are pure eye-candy and Bogart and Hepburn are a joy to watch. Also with some exciting adventure sequences, a beautiful script, and, as always, perfect direction by John Huston. This movie is worthy of repeated viewings and is one of the all-time greats. From a scale of 1-10 I give this film a 10! END
Rating:
Summary: DYNAMIC DUO!
Review: WHEN VHS MOVIES WERE FIRST AVAILABLE FOR SALE,THIS MOVIE WAS MY FIRST PURCHASE!IT STILL REMAINS MY ALL TIME FAVORITE MOVIE.THE COMBINATION OF BOGIE,THE HARD BITTEN DRUNK,WHOSE HAS A MIND OF HIS OWN,AND HEBURN, THE MISSIONARY BIBLE THUMPING WOMEN WITH A MIND OF HER OWN,IS APERSONALITY CONFLICT TO THE MAX!THE OBSTICLES ARE NOT ONLY THE RIVER THEY HAVE TO NAVIGATE DOWN, BUT ALSO THE GERMANS IN WW1,AND MOST OF ALL THEY MUST OVERCOME EACH OTHER! THE STORY BUILDS TO A PLEASANT SURPRISE ENDING.THIS MOVIE,TO ME,BELONGS IN EVERYONES VIDEO LIBRARY!
Rating:
Summary: Contender for greatest movie ever made
Review: What is your favorite movie of all time? When people ask me that, the first that comes to mind is African Queen starring the most talented actress I've ever seen, Katharine Hepburn, and Bogie at his best, not as a tough guy but as a real "character". This is a beaut. Their relationship is awesome. And it gives you a happy little ending there too.
Rating: 
Summary: An unforgettable journey
Review: I loved the book, and I loved the movie. Bogie is perfect as the captain of the Queen. A friend believes Hepburn was miscast because she wasn't beautiful enough, but she's a spinster who followed her missionary brother to the deepest Africa, so you can't expect Elle McPherson, can you? The cast play their parts well and, apart from the wooden Germans at the end, the whole movie is a joy to watch.
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