The Mosquito Coast 1986

"Look around ya, how did America get this way? Land of promise, land of opportunity. Give us the wretched refuse of your teeming shores. Have a Coke. Watch TV. Go on welfare. Get free money. Turn to crime - crime pays in this country. Why do they put up with it? Why do they keep coming? Look around you Charlie, this place is a toilet."

I expected a The Swiss Family Robinson style story, but got more of a mixture of that with Falling Down. At the beginning of the movie I felt like Harrison Ford was making sense but by the end I was over it. I guess that was the point of the movie, but man talk about a frustrating journey.

A crazy inventor drags his whole family behind him.

Underestimated, with the perspective of time we can understand the ambivalence of a character with an obsessive idealism. "Tell him he's a dangerous man", his son is warned. As narrator, maturity gives him a better perspective: "When I wasn't afraid to love him, the world seemed endless". PW directs in favour of a non-perfect story (the character of Mother), but builds an extraordinary fable about modern society.

I don't know why Ford said this was his favorite movie to make - it was DEFINITELY not mine to watch. Very hard and very difficult to see a man treat his wife and children like that. Good lessons in how to be better.

I remember seeing a reality show with a very similar story as this movie about a family from Great Britain that moved to i think it was the Philippines to start a resort on one of the islands there. The husband died just like in this movie leaving behind a wife and children.