It’s rather appropriate that Henry Thomas would be the star of a movie like Frog Dreaming or The Go Kids as it was released in some countries. In America, it was released as The Quest and the poster art pretty much gave away the big twist.
Thomas, a young boy from San Antonio, was a few months shy of 11 when he became the star of the highest-grossing movie at the time, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. He had appeared as the lead in two movies in 1984 (Misunderstood alongside Gene Hackman and Cloak & Dagger alongside Dabney Coleman). Both movies hadn’t performed well at the box office and had mixed results from critics.
So, Frog Dreaming is the type of movie a child actor makes in a last ditch effort to reclaim their status. The problem is the movie feels too juvenile for Thomas who was 14 when it was released. Some would call it a rip-off of The Goonies or Explorers. But the entertainment industry is an incestuous industry as Cheech Marin once said. It’s quite possible some producer knew of the other two movies and decided to make another style movie only this time down under as the 1980s had a huge boom in Australian cinema following the success of the first Mad Max movie.
The problem is the story feels padded even for an hour and a half. It reminds me of those ABC Weekend Specials anthology hosted by Capt. O.G. Readmore, a cat puppet voiced by Frank Welker. The series mixed sci-fi with humor and drama. But it’s main focus was on children. Yet it didn’t have the sentimental overtones as the afterschool specials.
Set in a rural Australian town, Cody (Thomas), is an orphaned American teen living with his guardian Gaza (Tony Barry). Cody is imaginative and inventive but he is often getting in trouble with the local authorities. It’s not bad trouble, but it’s more than Disney teen trouble. Cody and his friend, Wendy (Rachel Friend) and her younger sister, Jane (Tamsin West), go to discarded quarry area which has been mostly covered in dirty muddy water creating a pond. They discover the remains of a homeless man, Neville, who is mostly a skeleton as his flesh is gone due to the elements.
Cody suspect there is something in the waters as the Aborigine speak of a mythical creature Donkegin. Cody can’t get anyone to believe him and for good reason because there is actually nothing in the waters but old equipment left behind. And the creature is nothing more an a donkey engine excavator. Yes, nothing more than a piece of rusted machinery with marine life and plants on it.
At least in The Goonies and Explorers, we got to see the pirate ship and aliens respectively. Speaking of the alternative titles and posters, The Go-Kids made it look more like a haunted pirate adventure. It isn’t. And that’s probably why it has been mostly forgotten. It only made $171,000 in Australia at the box office. And I imagine a lot of the intended audience left the theaters angry that they had been duped. They probably told their peers not to see it.
If Millennials and Gen Zers were angry at Kangaroo Jack for not talking or rapping throughout the movie, I’m pretty sure many Gen Xers were angry to see people talk about Donkegin, a bunyip, for over an hour only to see that it’s just a machine that rises up from the waters due to the basic science of air pressure.
This is all too common with movies that talk down to children rather than try to go along with their mindset. Instead of a big payoff, it’s a shaggy dog story by an authority figure wagging its finger and saying, “See I told you it wasn’t nothing.” It doesn’t help that Cody never really feels as sympathetic as the characters in his previous movies. It could also be the rest of the Australian cast seem to be out of central casting of Aussie stereotypes. There’s even one bloke with a greaser-style hair and the police chief or whatever is a portly overweight wanker.
There are minor supernatural elements and a mysterious man, Charlie Pride (Dempsey Knight), who may be the Kuardaitcha Man, another mythical creature of Aboriginal folklore. But a scene at the end feels like it was added in post-production because audiences wouldn’t accept everything was just an excavator.
Frog Dreaming was originally meant to be directed by Russell Hagg, who was let go and replaced by Brian Trenchard-Smith. You can feel this movie has the elements of a flick that was directed by two directors with two different ideas.
The good news is Thomas didn’t let these flicks set him back. He took some time away from acting as he grew up, later appearing in Valmont directed by Milos Forman and as a young Norman Bates in Psycho IV: The Beginning. He has become a constant collaborator with filmmaker Mike Flannagan and even appeared alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 