The Adventures of the Wilderness, is a family entertainment. The film is wholesome almost to a fault. This bunch has to be some of the whitest white people on the planet. Yet the message of the film somewhat muddles up all of this wholesomeness. The family has left Denver because of the smog and industrialization that has made the daughter sick. Apparently moving out of Denver to the suburbs wasn't an option. This family has chosen to move way the hell out to the middle of nowhere. This "granola live off the land" existence is somewhat at odds with the message of the film which appears to be the American way of life sucks so lets go into the woods and grow stuff like a bunch of hippies.
What plot there is pretty much involves building a log cabin for everyone to live in, talk about togetherness. The log cabin building is frequently interrupted by someone, usually one of the kids being chased by a wild animal with Dad coming to the rescue. And that's it. There's no soul searching about the children being isolated from human contact, no introspection about what it means to co exist with nature, just a lot of scenes of kids getting chased by bears, or wolves or cougars.
The director is Stewart Raffill who made a lot of these kinds of films. Besides The Wilderness Family, his film making cannon includes Across The Great Divide, The Sea Gypsies and that E.T. rip off Mac and Me.
These films were usually advertised on television with the ads running so often that it basically hynotized the viewer into dragging himself or herself and family to see these films. Considering the relatively low budget these films were made on (there's lots of shots of the boom mike dropping into view), these film made some decent money.
100 minutes.
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