2/5 Follow The River
  by J. Lindner (Gem Lake, MN United States)
I watched this not really knowing what to expect. In the end, I was disappointed more on account of the improbability of the plot than anything else. Many movies are set in the colonial American frontier, this is almost a film genre unto itself, but most tend to deliver entertainment much more than this movie did. Beginning way back with "Drums Along the Mohawk" and continuing to the more recent version of "Last of the Mohicans," frontier-based movies show warring natives bent on killing and/or capturing white settlers.

While these kindsof raids obviously took place, the dramatizations Hollywood produces are generally cut from the same mold. "Follow the River" is no exception to the theme, but it fails to deliver any meaningful message and even fails to develop believable characters in plausible settings. The heroine, Mary Ingalls, is captured by raiding Shawnees, gives birth along the trail, sees her companions, friends, and her own son sold off to another tribe, gives her infant daughter to her captors, then escapes with some French woman who was captured prior to Mary and company.

The route back to civilization follows the course of a river that seems to be nothing more than boiling rapids and small waterfalls. The scenery is the best part of the whol;e movie. Though a search party is assembled to find the captives, this part of the storyline is quite weak and really serves no purpose to the overall production.

Miraculously (or rather per the script) Mary makes it back to near where her original cabin was located. Shortly thereafter her French companion arrives, then her husband (who supposedly was looking for her). At the end, her Indian captor returns with both her son and infant daughter so the family is happily reunited. Nothing is said of her other fellow captives, I suppose it was even too much of a stretch for the director to have these folks show up in the end as well.

The casting in this movie was weak. The characters do not grow at all in either wisdom or believability. The script was weak and the storyline unoriginal. I could probably list mre faults, but it really wouldn't add more to my point that this film was a waste of time to sit through.

1/5 Follow the book........
  by thomas williams (columbus, ohio USA)
If you liked the book, you'll hate the movie. Totally miscast, we needed a large, scary Helga!
Who wrote the screen play? They changed everything I liked about the book. I hate it when a really good story gets butchered!

4/5 Good Movie - Better Book
  by E. Davis (New Mexico)
This movie adaptation of the book is good, but the book is better. The story is incrediable.

1/5 Follow the River DVD
  by D. Ferguson (Utah)
Big disappointment if you've read the book... and I HIGHLY recommend the book! The book is on my top ten list, so go to the library or buy the book. Don't bother with the movie.

1/5 Two ways to review this movie, and it fails both ways
  by Hard Maple (Emmett, ID USA)
When looking at this movie as a stand-alone film it fails miserably. First off, its boring. There are two incidences of violence, both in the second scene, and one is actually not shownn (we hear the sound a man's voice get cut short by the sound of an arrow) so there is zero action in this film. Each scene is about two minutes long, so the movie is choppy. Basically two women, a man and a child are kidnapped by American Indians. They walk for two days to an Indian village, and Mary Ingles has an easy, perfect birth along the way.

Once there they meet an "old" woman. The old woman and the man have to run down a line of Indians who slap them with narrow strips of leather on sticks...oh owwie make it stop...(please note the sarcasm). It gives no explaination for this (remember I am viewing the movie as a stand-alone, not in reference to the book), so the whole exercise is superfluous. Then the family is seperated and divided among the Indians and French traders at the village.

A day or so later Mary abandons her family and runs off with the old woman to get back home to Mary's husband. After two or three days arduous journey where they whine non-stop about being hungry and fall into a one-foot deep river, they arrive home exhausted. And then someone in the make-up department put some leaves in Ellen Burstyn's hair.

Then the warrior that kidnapped them and divided Mary's family up came walking back into their front yard the next day with the two stolen children because of Mary's bravery (because she took 3 days to get back home).

This movie was weak, boring, and disjointed. They seemed to be afraid to offend Indians so they made them thieves with honor instead of the murdering thieves they were in the book. The most critical and important aspects of the "true" story were either ignored or glossed-over (the complete true story is unknown, the 2 books are based on handed-down tales from her descendants). I don't think this would even make it to the Hallmark channel, although Lifetime Movies is a possibility since they show Jackie Collins movies afterall.

When you compare this movie to the book of the same name, it drops to a zero-star review. The whole point of this story is that Mary and Gretel walked back home over a thousand miles of rough country without preperations and basically no provisions. They were bloody, bruised, starving and mentally ill when they arrived at their destination. Here are the important parts the movie misses:

When the Indians attacked the English settlement, they stole Bettie Draper's baby and played toss with it. One of the Indians smacked it out the air with his tomahawk then killed the baby by grabbing it by the ankle and smacking its head against the cabin. This is why Bettie held such a burning hatred for the Indians. But the baby didn't even appear in the film, so the source for Bettie's hatred is a simple gunshot wound. Good thing the director never bothered to play up that hatred, another missed opportunity.

Mary's mother was scalped at the English settlement and left for dead while she was protecting Mary's two sons. In the movie Mary has but one son (a fine Irish blonde??? son), and her mother did indeed die (off-camera) but from a broken heart from being scalped. So the Indians killed or kidnapped everyone from the settlement except her mother? Sounds hokey to me too.

After leaving the settlement they were placed on horse for the walk to the Indian village. But after a big hunting expedition everyone but the pregnant Mary was forced to walk, giving Bettie reason to hate Mary. Then Mary had her baby along the trail and would bleed for several days after. Finally the bleeding stopped and she chose to walk to. All-in-all it took a full month to walk to the village.

After their arrival in Shawnee town, they met the other captives including the aforementioned old woman. The men were stripped naked then forced to run the gauntlet. Except they Indians used sticks and whipped the runners as hard as possible and beat them unconcious if they fell down. Then the old woman and Bettie Draper were forced to run it naked. They too were beaten mercilessly. Again the movie missed out on this opportunity, the damage inflicted in the movies was a handfull of welts that could be calmed by blowing on them.

I'm not about to list everything here because the mistakes are far too many (or perhaps too few because the movie skipped so much of the events). The most important problem of the "adaptation" is the journey home. As I mentioned above it felt like two or three days long. In fact they walked for about three months straight, with almost no food, no winter clothing (no clothing at all by the time they got home, including their shoes), two blankets and one tomahawk. Along the way they starved, fought off wolves, fought off each other, and lost the tomahawk and one of the blankets. Near the end of the trip the old woman even attacked Mary in an attempt to eat her.

None of this was even addressed in the movie. The closest they came was as one point you realize they are down to the one blanket, but not even a mention along the way that the other one was lost (pretty important to me when walking through the mountains during the early winter). Mary arrived home with the tomahawk, weighing the same as when she left the Englished settlement, with her hair, dress and shoes just a little dirty.

This movie is a total failure to tell even a part of the story of Mary Ingles. This movie should have been less "Little House on the Prairie" and more "Last of the Mohicans." The only possible redeeming quality in this movie is Sheryl Lee's eyes. Don't just miss this movie, write your Congressman to pass a law banning movies this bad.