Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure

I literally just finished watching 'Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure' and had to Google "Ewoks Caravan Terrible", and I'm reassured that that's pretty much the consensus of most critics and viewers. I don't know what I ever saw in this film - I remembered it from my childhood as pretty enjoyable. Maybe I wasn't as fussy back then, maybe all the other films of the era were just as bad (but that can't be right - ET, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and Willow were all awesome, weren't they? I guess I'll get to them in time) ;)

First, the good. There are some gorgeous matte paintings throughout the film, expanding the scale of the story significantly. Without them, the cheapness of the effects work and costumes would defy any attempt to suspend one's disbelief. And I always find it refreshing when a film focuses on a goal other than lurve - somehow that dullest of narratives manages to intrude into virtually every movie ever made - even kid's films. But in the 80s at least, there were some decent kids films that revolved around reuniting families instead, and this is one of those. I liked the fact that the film made explicit the parallels between the separation of the human and Ewok families - it was even possible to feel sympathy for Mommy Ewok as she cried the night before her husband and children went off on their big adventure.

And the narration was fairly decent - it was necessary, for a start, given that otherwise the culture, motives, reactions and dialogue of the Ewoks would be a complete mystery. It gave the film a strange anthropology-documentary feel, rather than the fairy-tale feel I think they were going for, but that's not entirely out of place, given that this story is set in a science fiction universe (although mysticism and magic are clearly a part of the Star Wars universe).

I actually thought the girl playing little Sindel Towani was pretty decent for someone so young, although the bit with the pond was ridiculous - they didn't even show her actually noticing her brother was trapped in the pond - one minute she's not looking at him, the next she's declaring he's in the pond needing help even though from where she's standing she couldn't possibly see him (and boy, was he under there a long time - I wonder how many takes they did? Not enough, obviously, as he was still alive to keep filming this garbage). But that's the bad directing, not the little girl's fault.

I like the Gorax, the film's antagonist, for a man in a suit it was pretty well done. But the spiders in the caves were appallingly bad - the strings on the puppet were obvious in every frame. And the boar/wolf thing earlier in the film was decent in the dark and when it was just a giant paw ripping at the tree trunk in which the kids were hiding... but why on earth they thought it was a good idea to do the daytime bit showing more of it in all its stop-motion-y tackiness is beyond me.

The most exciting bit of the whole thing was the runaway horse. It was the only point in the movie that the fact of the Ewoks just being people inn suits didn't intrude to ruin my suspension of disbelief. The Ewoks themselves were mostly tolerable, Wicket being the only one that didn't creep me out - there's something about the dead, glassy eyes of the others that's just terrifying. As for Mace... what a whiny little bastard. Did he really have to repeat every line of dialogue twice? Even if it was scripted that way, it was atrociously acted. I spent the whole movie just wanting to punch him in the face.

And perhaps the worst part of all - it's all for nothing, because (SPOILERS!!) even though the kids rescue their parents, the parents both die at the beginning of the sequel. Thankfully, so does Mace ;)

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*Side Note: Wicket is played by the wonderful Warwick Davies, who was the star of one of my favourite films, Willow, which I mean to cover at some point.