Out of Africa: Critic Reviews

With the exception of Miss Streep's performance, the pleasures of Out of Africa are all peripheral -- David Watkin's photography, the landscapes, the shots of animal life -all of which would fit neatly into a National Geographic layout.

Out of Africa is a great movie to look at, breathtakingly filmed on location. It is a movie with the courage to be about complex, sweeping emotions, and to use the star power of its actors without apology.

Sydney Pollack applies craftsmanship and restraint to a classic plot curve of longing, fulfillment, and loss, and although the denouement is a bit overextended, he never yields to facile, insistent sentimentality -- his effects are honestly won.

Maybe the problem of the pacing is simply the nature of the beast these days with expensive period pieces. Once the difficult details are all in place, it may be too much to expect a director to resist milking every scene for more than it's worth.

It tells a grand love story in less-than-grand fashion but is nevertheless worth seeing because of all the other things it does right.

Out of Africa is, at last, the free-spirited, fullhearted gesture that everyone has been waiting for the movies to make all decade long. It reclaims the emotional territory that is rightfully theirs.

Lush, intelligent epic.

Dull biopic of the strong-willed Danish writer Isak Dinesen.

The film is so preened and self-satisfied.

The movie is not drama and far from a compelling romance. Needless to say, the prestige and technical polish on display here were enough to win this flick a passel of Oscars.

The film runs for 161 minutes and does not have a strongly defined narrative.

As the Academy found before awarding it seven Oscars, it is easy to be seduced by the lush cinematography and Barry's score. More difficult to tolerate is the slushy love story between Streep and Redford.

Despite a long-winded approach to moviemaking, Out of Africa is a sumptuous romantic epic with a wonderful lead performance from Meryl Streep.

Bloated and tedious, Pollack's attempt at epic cinema is hampered by failure to provide clues about the meaning of Africa for Dinesen as writer and woman, and Watkin's cinematography is impressive in the manner of National Geographic.

For all that it may come out of Africa, the film's final destination is not many miles from Disneyland.

Meryl Streep trots out a classic performance in this 1985 Oscar-winner about Isak Dineson/Karen Blixen, a writer who lived in Africa for a short time and experienced all manner of adventure and heartache, dutifully recorded in this Sydney Pollack epic.

beautiful but overrated

A lyrical and meditative movie about a strong-willed woman and the place she loves.

A sumptuous romantic drama, Out of Africa spans continents and partners in while relating the tale of how Karen Blixen grew to become the world-famous author.

Epic filmmaking at its most lushly romantic