Yesterday evening, Katherine and I watched The Mosquito Coast (1986), which I own on DVD. Katherine had never seen the movie, but I saw it a couple of times many years ago and wanted to watch it again. (I recently purchased the soundtrack, which is terrific.) The movie stars Harrison Ford as Allie Fox, Helen Mirren as his wife, and a young River Phoenix as his oldest son. It's about a cranky inventor who thinks the United States is going downhill fast. To escape the rot, he takes his family of five to live in the jungles of Belize (where the movie was shot). His energy and vision produce a comfortable life for him, his family, and the locals, but everything falls apart when three unsavory characters elbow their way in. The movie is a morality tale about excessive zeal. It also has some lessons about excessive trust. The wife places too much trust in her husband, with the result that she endangers her children.
Here is the trailer.
