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Hatari! Customer Reviews (22 - 24 of 36 Reviews)

The Duke, baby animals and romance=tons of smiles
This was one of the first movies to combine the majesty of Africa with a amusing plot and compelling Mancini music score. The Duke plays it true to type but it is director Howard Hawks' wonderful use of Africa's natural beauty and its animals that elevates this above the usual Wayne fare. Groundbreaking moviemaking it is not, but for sheer G-rated enjoyment and some truly memorable scenes/music it is hard to top. According to Hawks the actors actually captured the animals themselves (no stunt doubles) and there is little reason to doubt him since this was way before the computer effects seen in Forrest Gump. The mark of a great movie is that it is timeless. Unless you knew the Duke's bio intimately you could not tell what decade it was shot. Stunning visuals, a crisp tongue-in-cheek script, a chart-topping song (true--Baby Elephant Walk), and the Duke poking a little fun at himself, Hatari! is a movie that does not take itself too seriously but still delivers the goods many times over. I've seen it 50 times since it first came out and am always a little sad at the end that it ended. They don't make them that way any more. This is a movie you can enjoy with the family or can leave in the hands of a baby sitter and not worry that your kids. Highest possible "fun" rating. In its own way as good as anything the Duke did. Watch it again and listen to how versatile Mancini's score is. Still my all-time favorite movie.

All-Time Favorite
I love to watch movies with animals and when I happened across this movies years ago, I absolutely loved it! I'm a huge John Wayne fan and feel he did a great job in this movie. I am 30 and have seen it probably ten times and never get tired of it. Very entertaining.

How times have changed!
I ran across this movie by accident on late nite TV -- and I loved it! Hatari is East Africa 40 years ago. There's no plot to speak of. John Wayne heads a team that chases down and catches animals to sell to zoos. They carry guns -- but they don't shoot anything; they smoke and drink to excess and eat lots of fatty foods (crab cakes fried in antelope fat!); they drive old beat-up jeeps and land rovers and they don't wear seatbelts -- and when they roll a jeep they pick everybody up and dust them off instead of calling a doctor (or a lawyer); the men are dumb and tough and lovable and honest and the women are smart and competent and sexy and honest -- and they don't have to prove anything to anybody.

There's no way you could make this movie now. These guys lasso real animals -- giraffes and rhinos and zebras -- and wrestle them to the ground and put them in cages. The animals were probably not amused. But Hatari was politically correct in its day. Wayne's team includes a German, a Frenchman, an American Indian, a Spaniard, and an Italian femme fatale and they all get along pretty well. The Africans in the movie are called boys and there's not a hint that they might prefer to be called something else, like Mr. or Sir.

The scenery is marvelous, the photography fabulous, the music cute, the comedy stupid, the love scenes corny, and the animal capture scenes are fascinating. So this is how zoos get their animals....

Hatari is an idealized Africa of Bwanas and boys. Today, I suppose we're safer, happier, healthier, etc., but living in the shadow of Kilimanjaro and chasing animals around sure looks like a lot of fun.

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