source: Shipwrecked

Trailer—Haakon Haakonsen

Haakon Haakonsen

This is an old-fashioned seafaring yarn, with not much inspiration of its own. Among the many adventure stories / movies it makes reference to are "Captains Courageous", "Mutiny on the Bounty", "Treasure Island", "Robinson Crusoe" and "The Swiss Family Robinson". Director Nils Gaup handles the action well and the production values are suitably epic and colourful. The British / Swedish cast combine surprisingly well, though no individual player is outstanding.

This film is a good example of how bowdlerizing a story to make it presentable to someone's fallacious misconception of "children" can render it useless to anyone of any age. For goodness sake, children are the most rough and raucous people around -- and if not that then at least as rough and raucous as any other cohort. That's probably in large part why they LIKE stories about sailors and pirates in the first place. A sailing ship is one place where no one washes, or changes his clothes, or needs to "watch his language." In this film no one ever even gets dirty, and even the pirates are POLITE! Of course the idea that, on an uninhabited island, one would pretty soon dispense with clothing altogether - well Heavens, we would't want children to even THINK about that. I would hope that anyone over the age of ten would have the good sense to be sickened by this one, even if they didn't know that patronizing them was the reason it's so bad.

Very cute, "lightly" based on the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Treasure Island", despite being highly popular in the cinematographic world, the plot always attracts me, sea, shipwrecked, island (desert or not), cute and determined children, evil pirates, fun and adventure...

It takes a while for Shipwrecked to set sail, but it's an amusing family adventure once it gets going. The plot feels like a mix of Treasure Island and Home Alone, even though it's based on a Norwegian book that came before either of those stories. I saw this one in theaters when it first came out, but I had forgotten most of the movie. It was fun to revisit it again with my kids.

This was my favourite film as a child - it was shown on tv one night and my family taped it for me, on a whim (back in the days of VHS). I LOVED it and still do, 25 years later. Highly recommend, especially for children.

Feels repetitive due to previous Disney films, but I still felt satisfied with 'Shipwrecked'. Nothing is particularly memorable about it, admittedly. The cast aren't all that, while the cinematography and editing isn't amazing. The dialogue is basic, as is the premise - which feels as if it has taken different parts from the studio's other work. Those include 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'In Search of the Castaways' and 'Swiss Family Robinson'. The source material by Oluf Falck-Ytter is apparently inspired by some of the same things as those are, so I guess it's no surprise. Either way, I'm not convinced Disney needed to tackle this area once again. I will say, by the conclusion, I did feel content enough with the film; helped by the short run time, no doubt. Straightforward and a little plain, but narrowly enjoyable.

The producers here tried to imitate The Black Stallion (without the horse) and Treasure Island (without the brutality and fear). The net result is a pleasant if not too thrilling family film about living the fantasy of being shipwrecked. In real life, the protagonist would most likely have been drowned, or died from exposure and starvation. But this is Disney. Those things don't happen in Disney world. A pleasant family film for an hour or so.