The African Queen (1951)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: Perfectly cast, smartly written, and beautifully filmed, The African Queen remains thrilling, funny, and effortlessly absorbing even after more than half a century's worth of adventure movies borrowing liberally from its creative DNA.
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Movie Info
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Cast
as Charlie Allnut
as Rose Sayer
as Rev. Samuel Sayer
as 1st Officer
as Captain of the Louisa
as 2nd Officer
as Petty Officer
as 1st Officer at Shona
as First Officer of Shona
as 2nd Officer at Shona
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Critic Reviews for The African Queen
All Critics (42) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (41) | Rotten (1) | DVD (10)
The African Queen is top flight entertainment, delightful, different, always interesting.
Five minutes in, and cowriter-director John Huston has already set the stage for something besides your typical '50s jungle-bwana boogie.
It is a picture with an unassuming warmth and naturalness...
The direction is often questionable, but the screenplay (by James Agee, John Collier, Huston, and Peter Viertel from C.S. Forester's novel) is a model of tight construction.
Impossible to deny this film's entertainment value...
And so Mr. Huston merits credit for putting this fantastic tale on a level of sly, polite kidding and generally keeping it there, while going about the happy business of engineering excitement and visual thrills.
Audience Reviews for The African Queen
A very entertaining and exciting adventure shot on location in Africa in glorious Technicolor and with a wonderful chemistry between Hepburn and Bogart - she as a smart, determined and strong-willed woman and he in a hilarious performance that granted him his only Oscar.
Super Reviewer
Two legends onboard a small boat is enough to create magic. A John Huston adventure always shines above the rest because of its gravitas, an inherent solemnity that here is conveyed through Bogart and Hepburn.
Super Reviewer
Charlie Allnut: Oh, I'm not worried miss. Gave myself up for dead back where we started. "The greatest adventure a man ever lived... with a woman!" The African Queen is a movie I have wanted to see for a long time. It has the distinction of being one of those classic films that very film fan has to see. On top of that, it stars Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn and is directed by John Huston. So there's really nothing to deter you from wanting to watch it. When WW1 is launched, a missionary living in Africa with her minister brother, must leave with a rugged, riverboat captain; after her village is destroyed by German soldiers and her brother dies. Rose wants Charlie to go down the river, which worries Charlie a great deal because as he says, there's only death down the river. He reluctantly agrees and the river, as well as a German U-Boat create many obstacles for the missionary and alcoholic captain. The African Queen wasn't the irrevocable masterpiece a expected, but nonetheless it is still a very good film. I wasn't blown away by anything that the film did, but it was undeniably entertaining and well constructed, written, directed, and acted. The African Queen is a film that needs to be seen by all film buffs.
Super Reviewer
The African Queen Quotes
| Charlie Allnut: | Oh, I'm not worried miss. Gave myself up for dead back where we started. |
| Charlie Allnut: | You can't do that! |
| Rose Sayer: | How do you know? You never tried it. |
| Charlie Allnut: | Well yeah, but I never tried shooting myself in the head neither. |
| Charlie Allnut: | Well I ain't sorry for you no more, ya crazy, psalm-singing , skinny old made! |
| Charlie Allnut: | Well I ain't sorry for you no more, ya crazy, psalm-singing, skinny old made! |
| Charlie Allnut: | Leeches ahhhh! |