Rating: 2.5 Stars
The following review contains spoilers.
Overview:
Some married geologists are visiting the African country of Tigora, home of the Zambouli tribe, to investigate the magical healing powers of its dirt. When they are killed by a cave-in, their young daughter is adopted by the Shaman of the tribe, as the little blonde girl fulfills some convenient prophecy they have. She’s given the name Sheena, and is raised as a protector of the tribe, and is taught Shaman’s ability to communicate with animals telepathically.
One day, Shaman has a vision that the King of Tigora will be killed and the tribe attacked, so she travels to the capital city where she’s promptly arrested. See, the King’s brother, Otwani, wants to be king himself, and wants to open up the sacred Zambouli lands for strip-mining. Otwani arranges for the King to be killed with an arrow and frames Shaman for it. Some visiting reporters from America, Vic and Fletch, there to interview Otwani for a sports show, as Otwani is improbably not just a Tigoran Prince but also a star kicker in an American NFL team (WTF), accidentally capture video proof that Shaman was framed. Vic and Fletch head to the prison hoping to bribe their way in to interview Shaman, but as they arrive Sheena appears with an army of animals and orchestrates a prison break. It’s about time, too, as Sheena was barely in the movie up to this point.
Vic and Fletch follow Sheena into the jungle, where they learn Shaman has died from her wounds. They’re attacked by Otwani and his army, sending Fletch into town to try to get their filmed proof to someone who can use it, while Vic and Sheena flee on foot. From there, most of the movie is Vic and Sheena racing to get to her tribe in time to warn them while Otwani and his men pursue. On the way, Vic and Sheena fall in love, naturally. Though at one point both are captured and separated, Sheena calls on a herd of flamingos to save her from a helicopter, while Vic uses good old-fashioned American moxie to outwit his captors and take control of their car.
Making it to her village, Sheena rallies the troops and, honestly, they pretty easily kill all of Otwani’s men, using a combination of arrows, spears, rolling boulders, and of course telepathically-commanded animals. In the end, Sheena is alone, facing down Otwani in a charging vehicle with only a bow-and-arrow. She hits him square in the chest, but the car doesn’t stop, until luckily Vic arrives just in time to ram it from the side. Vic is burned over most of his body and near death, but the power of the healing dirt (and you thought it’d never come up again!) is able to save him. Though at first Vic wants to bring Sheena back to the U.S. with him, he realizes the world will change her and destroy her innocent beauty, so they make a tearful goodbye.
Best Parts:
This is a pretty nice-looking movie. It has good cinematography, Africa looks beautiful, and I enjoyed seeing all the real animals and how they interacted with the story. I mean, hopefully they were treated humanely, but not much we can do about that now. They do fun stuff like having two chimps hold up a stick to trip a soldier. It’s neat!
I can see people being critical of Tanya Roberts’s performance, but given the movie they were making, I think she did an admirable job. It can’t be easy to run around in a bikini all day, swinging from vines and riding zebras without a saddle, and saying dialogue like, “Mouths were given us to eat with. Why did you touch yours to mine?”
I like when movies like this have at least one really bizarre element, like making the jealous prince also an American football star. Why would they do that? They mention it once in a while, but it’s not like his super-kicking powers have a climactic scene where he kicks a hedgehog across the jungle or something.
The woman who played Shaman was an actual African princess, Princess Elizabeth of Toro. Not much else to say about that except it’s kinda cool. A fun fact, if you will.
Worst Parts:
Vic is a really annoying type of character. He grasps pretty early on that Sheena was raised in isolation, doesn’t know much of the outside world, and has a limited vocabulary, but he’s always throwing around a lot of terms and slang and stuff anyway. He’s always like, “Baby, you are talking to a man in pain. I am sitting on an Emmy and I can’t get it out.”
Otwani has a co-conspirator in the King’s fiance, Zanda, who Otwani now plans to marry, and her entire character is being mad that Sheena is so pretty. After Otwani orders Sheena to be taken alive, Zanda goes behind his back and takes Sheena off in a helicopter to drop her to her death in front of her whole village (until, you know, they’re attacked by a hundred flamingos).
I don’t usually notice scores in movies, but I disliked Sheena’s score whenever I did notice it. Every time it would swell up and start to make itself known during a big scene, I’d think, this doesn’t sound like the right music for this moment at all.
So what’s gonna happen now that Otwani is also dead? Are they still going to tell the world he killed his brother, the King? Will the next leader just decide to strip-mine the Zambouli lands anyway? You could say, who cares, but it does raise the question of what Sheena and company actually accomplished.
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