Disney Plus-Or-Minus: A Far Off Place

One of the most frequent criticisms lobbied at Disney dating all the way back to Walt’s era is that the studio tends to make the same movies over and over again. There is definitely some truth to that, even though it underestimates the risks involved in some of the genuinely groundbreaking work the studio is equally capable of producing. But sometimes, it’s hard to ignore Disney’s cookie-cutter technique. For instance, if all I told you about this week’s movie was that it was about two young people setting off on a perilous journey across Africa on foot with a native guide, you would be forgiven for thinking, “Hey, didn’t he just cover Cheetah a few weeks ago?”

As it turns out, A Far Off Place not only isn’t Cheetah II, it’s a slightly better movie than its predecessor. The film was a coproduction with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. The two companies first joined forces to produce Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988. But despite that film’s massive success, Amblin hadn’t had much to do with Disney since. They’d helped launch Hollywood Pictures with Arachnophobia and collaborated on Peter Bogdanovich’s Noises Off for Touchstone (we’ll get to both of those over on the Touchstone side in due course). But after A Far Off Place, Amblin wouldn’t have another project at Disney until 2011.

The film was based on the 1972 adventure novel A Story Like The Wind and its 1974 sequel, A Far Off Place, by South African writer Laurens van der Post. Van der Post was…um, an interesting character. He’d volunteered for the British Army during World War II, serving time as a Japanese POW. He’d later write about his prison experiences and one of those books became the basis of Nagisa Oshima’s film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. After the war, he returned to South Africa, leading multiple expeditions into the Kalahari Desert and becoming acquainted with the Native Bushmen. But after his death in 1996, it was alleged that many of van der Post’s claims about his life and adventures had been, at the very least, greatly exaggerated. In addition, it was revealed that he’d fathered a secret child back in the 1950s with a 14-year-old girl he was chaperoning on a sea voyage. So you might say he left behind a complicated legacy.

Producer Eva Monley grew up in Kenya and had been a big fan of van der Post’s two young adult novels. As an adult, she’d become a location manager and production consultant on such films as Lawrence Of Arabia, The Man Who Would Be King and many others. She’d also worked on Empire Of The Sun, which is presumably where Monley secured the interest of Steven Spielberg and Amblin Entertainment in A Far Off Place.

Three screenwriters ended up receiving credit on the film, all of whom either had or would soon have experience at Touchstone. Australian Robert Caswell had written A Cry In The Dark, which earned Meryl Streep an Oscar nomination, before signing on at Touchstone to write The Doctor starring William Hurt. Jonathan Hensleigh had been working on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and would later be responsible for the blockbuster Armageddon. And Sally Robinson had worked primarily in television before her first produced feature credit on Medicine Man with Sean Connery.

Robinson was specifically brought on board after the filmmakers decided to switch the protagonist from a young man to a young woman. This change enabled the hiring of Reese Witherspoon as Nonnie Parker. Witherspoon was only about 16 at the time and hadn’t made a lot of movies. But she’d made a big impression when her film debut, The Man In The Moon, marked her as a major emerging talent. Since then, she’d appeared in a couple of TV-movies but this was only her second feature.

Witherspoon’s costar, Ethan Randall, only had a bit more experience, having starred in the comedies Dutch and All I Want For Christmas. A few years later, he would change his name to Ethan Embry and win acclaim for such films as Empire Records and That Thing You Do! About a decade later, Witherspoon and Embry would be back together on screen in Sweet Home Alabama. We’ll be getting to that one over on the Touchstone side eventually, too.

The movie got off to a false start under the direction of René Manzor, another alumni of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. After shooting for a couple of weeks, Manzor and cinematographer Pal Gyulay were fired after it was discovered that most of their footage was unusably out of focus. In need of replacements, Spielberg recommended Mikael Salomon, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer of The Abyss. Spielberg had worked with him on Always and knew that Salomon wanted to transition to directing. Salomon got the directing gig and hired Juan Ruiz Anchía to be his director of photography.

The film’s opening scene is surprisingly un-Disney-like in its shocking violence. A group of poachers ambushes a herd of elephants, mowing them down and proceeding to hack off their tusks with chainsaws. But before they get far, they’re interrupted by Colonel Theron (Maximilian Schell, returning to Disney for the first time since emerging from The Black Hole), who proceeds to take out the poachers one by one. Clearly, we’re in for a darker ride than your typical True-Life Adventure.

Theron turns out to be friends with Paul Parker (played by Hal Hartley regular Robert John Burke), a wildlife commissioner who lives on a ranch with his wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Kalember), and daughter, Nonnie. The Parkers are hosting an old friend, John Winslow (John Winslow, who’d appeared as Edward Herrmann’s boyfriend in Big Business). John and his recalcitrant son, Harry (Embry), are mourning the recent death of John’s wife and hoping the safari will hit the reset button for their family.

That evening, the Parkers host a dinner for their guests, inviting Theron and another commissioner, John Ricketts (Jack Thompson, who’d appeared in the original, non-Disney The Man From Snowy River). The men discuss the escalating poaching problem but Parker is adamant the situation must be handled without violence. Theron and Ricketts both feel that ship has sailed but agree to let Parker handle things his way for now.

Late that night, Nonnie sneaks out of the house with her faithful dog, Hintza. Unable to sleep, Harry decides to follow along. They meet up with a young Bushman, Xhabbo (played by Sarel Bok, a musician discovered after a lengthy talent search in Africa). Xhabbo has been injured and Nonnie assists him to a nearby cave to recuperate.

The next morning, Nonnie spots smoke billowing from the direction of her house. She sneaks back to discover the poachers have staged a midnight raid, murdering both her parents and Harry’s father. After disabling some of their vehicles, Nonnie hurries back to the cave, where Harry is understandably shaken up by the news. With the bad guys on their trail, the kids decide their only path to safety is across the Kalahari Desert, a trek of over 1,000 miles on foot.

Now, I would not want to make the argument that A Far Off Place is some kind of stealth masterpiece. The story follows mostly familiar beats. Nonnie and Harry bicker and argue until a grudging respect grows between them. Xhabbo keeps them alive, imparting lessons in survival and maturity to Harry along the way. The identity of the secret bad guy who’s been in kahoots with the poachers all along can be spotted from a mile off. I deny none of this.

However, A Far Off Place is an engaging and entertaining story, beautifully filmed by Salomon and Ruiz Anchía and enthusiastically performed by Witherspoon, Embry and Bok. As you know if you’ve been following this column, I’ve seen a lot, and I mean a LOT, of kids versus nature adventure movies. Apart from the PG-13 violence that liberally peppers this PG movie, there weren’t a lot of surprises here. But I still had a good time with A Far Off Place. Good actors and assured direction go a long way in helping an otherwise predictable story.

Overall, critics were unenthusiastic about A Far Off Place, with several finding the film’s violence inappropriate for younger audiences. The movie opened on March 12, 1993, winding up in fifth place with around $3.5 million, behind such films as Chris Rock’s CB4, Fire In The Sky, Falling Down and Groundhog Day. By the next week, younger viewers had moved on to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. A Far Off Place was gone shortly thereafter, ending its theatrical run just shy of $13 million.

Theatrically, the film played with Trail Mix-Up, the third and, to date, final Roger Rabbit short. Disney’s handling of the Roger Rabbit cartoons always seemed a bit random. The first had played with Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, which actually felt appropriate. The second was attached to Touchstone’s Dick Tracy, perhaps because an animated short in front of a period film makes a certain kind of sense. In this case, I can only assume that Amblin played a big part in reclaiming partial ownership of Roger. It’s a fun cartoon but it makes an odd prelude to A Far Off Place.

As of this writing, Trail Mix-Up is available to stream on Disney+ but A Far Off Place is conspicuously absent. You also can’t track it down on any of the usual digital providers. It has never been released on Blu-ray and the only DVD release is long out of print. For this column, I had to seek out a copy at the public library (yes, physical media is important, kids, but don’t forget to support your local library, too!). I’m not quite sure why Disney is attempting to sweep A Far Off Place under the rug. It’s a good movie and surely an early film from Reese Witherspoon would continue to attract viewers. Whether it’s concerns over the violence or perhaps evidence of a contentious relationship with their former partners at Amblin, I can’t say. However, A Far Off Place is worth revisiting.

VERDICT: Disney Plus