Mr. Robinson Crusoe

1932 silliness

Rating: 10/20 (Dylan: 7/20)

Plot: A tough guy bets his buddies a thousand dollars that he and his dog can survive on a deserted island. He befriends a monkey, a parrot, and at least one goat and uses his ingenuity to make his short stay as comfortable as possible.

Ever want to see a monkey milk a goat? This is the movie for you! Want to see Douglas Fairbanks bounce around like an idiot juiced up on caffeine pills? This is also the movie for you! This was on some non-profit cable channel while I was at my parents, and it made Dylan and I laugh for all the wrong reasons. You get an overly enthusiastic Douglas Fairbanks (did he really transition to the talky era this poorly?) talking to all of these animals and building these sometimes-clever contraptions with unrealistic speed. You see him spend twenty minutes building a hammer, and then twenty-six island days later (that's how many days are in June, by the way, if you go by his character's calendar), he's got this entire city built. The references to Robinson Crusoe got tiresome, and this has a really lame depiction of tribe life that looks like a cross between Hawaii and Africa. Also, I'm not sure if it's because this thing hasn't been cleaned up or if the technology made it difficult to film on an island back in the early-30s, but this looked and sounded terrible. The actors all sounded like they were speaking their lines into a can while standing in a cave. I think the script must look something like this:

Douglas Fairbanks' character: Mmubua hayaba vvummbar!
Saturday: Mwey hrtung phungby.
Douglas: Phungby? Ha ha ha! Mmum pood mroth yort!

I know what the parrot was saying though. He said, "OK!" About a dozen times. Couldn't they have found a parrot with a larger vocabulary? This movie also has a scene with bananas that might be the single dumbest scene involving bananas that I've ever seen. Favorite line, spoken by Douglas Fairbanks' friends as stand on their yacht and use binoculars to watch some natives: "Oh. Mama spank." At least I think that's what the guy said.