Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

This film a clef presents Peter Viertel, who had a hand in writing "The African Queen," as what appears to be the principal author of the screenplay. Since he was present during the shooting of "The African Queen" (1951) and since he wrote this fictionalized account of the making of the movie, he's intelligent, sensitive, handsome, talented, and humane. He's played by Jeff Fahey, who is at least handsome, whatever else he is.The real director was John Huston who wound up making one of the best-crafted films of his career in Africa. He's played by the director of the current movie, Clint Eastwood. Eastwood is hired to shoot the film but his real interest -- his passion -- isn't making the movie but rather shooting a bull elephant. He keeps putting off the movie in pursuit of the game. The shooting of "The African Queen" doesn't even begin until the very end, and the last word is "action." I hope I didn't get that too mixed up. The plot is easy enough to follow but describing it is a bit of a challenge. It's not about shooting "The African Queen." It's about preparing to shoot "The Afican Queen." The Katherine Hepburn character (Marissa Berenson) appears only briefly and has a few lines. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall are barely noticeable.Eastwood, who also directed, does a recognizable impersonation of John Huston's distinctive intonations. That's the easy part. I can do it myself. The script initially gives us a cheerful, charming, and witty Huston, all smiles and cigarillos. Drunkenly, nobly, he gets into a fist fight with a bigger and younger man and is pounded to the ground. His friends help him to his feet and one of them says, "We'd better get a doctor." "He's hurt that bad, huh?", Eastwood gasps.But once we get to Africa the story turns a bit and so does Eastwood. He loses whatever sense of responsibility he had to the producers and crew and concentrates on finding that damned big tusker he wants as a trophy. I could never understand why anyone would want to shoot and kill a mammoth like that. They're a danger to no one. They eat grass and leaves and mind their own business. This is being written three weeks after poachers in a national park in Zimbabwe poisoned an elephant watering hole and killed about 300 of the beasts.At any rate, this film reminded me of a short from an entirely different genre. Laurel and Hardy are preparing a boat they intend to launch. They saw away at it, step the mast, paint the hull. All kinds of pratfalls and mistakes take place. The boat sinks the moment it touches water. The whole comedy was a set up for a much larger adventure that never comes off.Instead of a story about the actual making of "The African Queen," which was quite an adventure in itself, we have a character study of a John-Huston-like figure. And it fails to really come off, even as a character study. In the penultimate scene, Eastwood confronts a huge elephant who presents him with a perfect shot only a few feet away. Eastwood doesn't shoot. Okay. I understand that much. Faced with such magnificence, Eastwood experiences finally a kind of external reality. There are values that transcend his own.But then his "native bearer" and admired friend, Kivu, sacrifices his own life to save Eastwood's. I don't believe it. And when Eastwood and company return to begin shooting the picture, just after the death, Eastwood looks glum, but I have no idea what he's thinking beyond the obvious remorse.It's colorful and Huston was a Byronic figure, but this ought to be more fun than it is.

Generally, I steer clear of movies about movies but when Clint Eastwood is involved and hunting in Africa is involved, well, pop some corn, sweetheart, I'm gonna prop my feet on the coffee table.Eastwood is so convincing in this role I plumb forgot he is my favorite western character, Josey Wales.I suspect the fact that John wanted to kill an elephant turned some viewers off and that is a shame for they missed a great performance, in which no elephants were killed. I have been a hunter all my life and when John said, "It's a passion that's beyond you. I'd have to explain to you the sound of the wind and the smell of the woods. I'd have to create you all over again. . . .and stamp out those years you spent on the dirty pavement in cramped shoes." we connected and there was a tear in my eye.And this is what a true artist does...he relays an emotion, from the writer to the reader; from the singer to the listener; from the actor to the viewer. I predict White Hunter Black Heart will gain popularity as time goes by.

This was strangely unsatisfying. Unlike a lot of people I actually enjoy novels and films about filmmaking despite the fact that most of them - think Mank's The Barefoot Contessa which goes astray once it abandons the filmmaking for the travails of Ava Gardner's marital problems with an impotent husband - are flawed. Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Minnelli's The Bad And The Bautiful have still to be equalled let alone eclipsed and WHBH is not, alas, up to the task. Before he published the novel Peter Viertel was advised by several friends not least his best friend, Irwin Shaw, to give the characters names that were not transparent - John Wilson, Peter Verrill, etc - but failed to heed it. Whilst it's true enough that insiders would get it no matter what the characters were called - after all how many charismatic eccentric movie directors shot a major movie with two iconic stars on location in Africa in the early fifties (if you discount Mogambo, which had Three major stars anyway). Clint Eastwood is a highly competent actor-director, no question but not this time around.

And I'm not talking painting. White Hunter, Black Heart is an admirable failure, a film that tries vainly and unsuccessfully to peer into the complex genius of an artist. I call WHBH admirable because Clint Eastwood could not possibly have believed this movie would be a commercial success, yet he made it anyway. It is an actors' movie, a film designed to allow the director and his crew to experiment with a serious subject-and consequential themes--without worrying about the commercial side of the production.The movie is a failure because even with all the hard work from cast and crew, we ultimately don't much care if the movie on screen, a thinly veiled African Queen, gets made. From Eastwood's character on down, there just isn't an emotional bonding that makes the viewer stick to the screen with an adhesive caring. Instead, we get two hours of Clint doing a more humorous than serious John Huston impression.I didn't enjoy White Hunter, Black Heart. I didn't hate it either. Instead, I observed it, the way I observe some impressionist paintings. I can see the use of color, the vibrancy of the brush strokes, the composition, but the whole never gels.A lot of work with no heart-felt payoff.