Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Oh The Cheese! Caravan Of Courage – An Ewok Adventure Is Truly Terrible!


The Good: Production values
The Bad: Plot, Acting, Characters, Many of the special effects
The Basics: In Caravan Of Courage – An Ewok Adventure, two human children end up among the Ewoks in an unsophisticated adventure to find their parents.


Lately, I have been taking some time to stretch my reviewing wings and revisiting some of the delights of my childhood in order to revisit things I might have once enjoyed. Watching Caravan Of Courage – An Ewok Adventure, I am utterly flabbergasted that I was ever so young! In fact, even for fans of the Star Wars films, it is impossible to recommend this television movie.

Caravan Of Courage – An Ewok Adventure combines the worst aspect of Return Of The Jedi - the Ewoks – with the always-problematic use of young child actors. Caravan Of Courage – An Ewok Adventure is a science fiction children’s movie that lacks a truly compelling story or memorable characters and is performed by adult actors in bear suits and child actors who probably should not be in the profession. And the stop-motion animation sequences are so cheesy as to be entirely laughable.

Two parents search for their missing children near a downed space ship on the forest moon of Endor when a giant creature comes out of the woods to menace them. Elsewhere on Endor, Wicket is left behind by his father when his father wants to go looking for his children using an Ewok glider. In the process, the Ewok children and father recover the human children Mace and Cindel. After helping Cindel get the medicine she needs in order to survive, the Ewoks befriend the two children.

The older child, Mace, takes his little sister away from the Ewok village and they are attacked by a giant animal. Rescued in the morning by Ewoks, Mace and Cindel get their first evidence that their parents are still alive when their father’s life monitor is found on the creature. Visiting Logray, the Ewok medicine man, they are directed toward the master of the beast and they go on a quest to find him and rescue their parents from the Gorax.

Caravan Of Courage – An Ewok Adventure is seriously hampered by a terribly unlikable protagonist. Much of the movie focuses on Mace, a child who looks like Luke Skywalker, but talks like Han Solo. He is an arrogant boy who is ready to take care of his younger sister when he realizes that their parents are still alive and he becomes determined to find them. The character is basically an arrogant jerk and his anger is never presented or explained in a compelling way. Actor Eric Walker alternately snarls or yells each and every one of his lines, making his character thoroughly unlikable.

The movie is fleshed out with pointless scenes of Ewok parents and children simply existing together without any real purpose within the film. As a children’s movie and a film that is packed with dialogue that is in the guttural Ewok language, there is narration that actually helps as it informs the viewer what is actually going on in several of the scenes. This narration is most useful during a ceremony the Ewoks perform before the caravan begins its dangerous journey which would otherwise be incomprehensible and pointless. As it is, it feels more like filler and the display of Ewok culture ultimately goes nowhere.

Caravan Of Courage – An Ewok Adventure features problems that are solved by the child Cindel (like her realizing that the magic trap Mace falls into at the pond can be solved with Wicket’s magical stick) and this only seems to reinforce the idea that Ewoks are only about as smart as children. But I suspect smart children will not be impressed by the terrible acting, lack of interesting characters and atrocious special effects utilized in Caravan Of Courage – An Ewok Adventure.

For other works in the Star Wars franchise, please check out my reviews of:
Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars - Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
The Clone Wars
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 1
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 2
Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars - Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi

1/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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