Frozen North

By J. C.

THE ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD

Directed by ROBERT STEVENSON

Screenplay by JOHN WHEDON

Along with slush, broken toys and bills, one of the lingering misfortunes of every holiday season is the annual Disney movie, which displays a dismayingly hearty life span. It will circulate for months, play the Saturday matinee route and eventually show up on television. The small screen, in fact, is probably more suitable for The Island at the Top of the World, where its dirigible would not look so much like a balloon left over from a parade, and its seething volcano would appear at least somewhat more menacing than an eruption on an adolescent's skin.

The Disney people were once able to pull off the occasional magical effect; if memory serves, there were quite a few in 1954's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Now the tacit supposition at the studio seems to be that the tykes will not notice the shoddy effects, and probably will not care much if they do. But the careless craftsmanship scrimps on the spectacle and destroys the romance of what might have been a pretty fair adventure. The story is a pastiche of lost-world yarns. It goes heavy on Jules Verne and throws in odd bits from H. Rider Haggard and James Hilton. Donald Sinden, currently on Broadway in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of London Assurance (TIME, Dec. 30), shows up playing a curmudgeonly British explorer who goes on an elaborate search for his son. Junior has been missing for well over a year, so it may be assumed that Dad is ambivalent about his progeny. Since this is a Disney product, however, it is emphasized that Dad, while slow to act, is fierce once the decision is made. He undertakes the search with reassuring vigor and just the right dash of anxiety.

Since Junior was last seen slipping over a snow ridge somewhere in the frozen North, Dad joins forces with a just-plain-swell American (David Hartman) who specializes in Arctic studies. With an occasional hand from an eccentric French blimp captain, these two run Junior to ground--rather strange ground too. He has been lodged in a verdant valley that is nestled behind some icecaps and warmed, as Scientist Hartman conjectures, "by volcanic springs." Even more amazing, the folks who inhabit the valley are Vikings, descendants of the old explorers, who live, work and fight just as their forebears did. They also believe that the searchers are the vanguard of marauding hordes who will destroy their little kingdom. In this belief, as in their generally thorny temperament, the Vikings are encouraged by a high priest with eyes that glow golden when he is enraged. He figures the newcomers for infidels and will settle for nothing less than their bodies laid out on a burning funeral ship. Anyone can fill in the rest from there.

This all could have been jolly enough had anyone taken the trouble to believe in it, or at least make it look good. Along with everything else, though, the Arctic looks like a melted dessert, the Viking village like a low-rent neighborhood in Disneyland, and the Vikings themselves like Hell's Angels on Halloween.

qedJ .C.

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