In Search Of The Castaways: A Science Fiction Classic By Jules Verne! AAA+++

In Search of the Castaways was Hayley Mills's third feature for Disney, an agreeable adventure--loosely based on a Jules Verne story--with enough derring-do to make kids happy and with the right touch of self-conscious silliness to keep adults smiling. Mills plays Mary Grant, a missing freighter captain's daughter convinced her father is still alive somewhere in Earth's southern hemisphere. With the help of her brother (Keith Hamshire) and a veteran seaman (an extremely unlikely if charming Maurice Chevalier), Mary convinces a shipping magnate, Lord Glenarvan (Wilfrid Hyde-White), to set sail and find the missing Captain Grant. The team survives freezing weather, avalanches, a menacing condor, an active volcano, Maori captors, and a plot by a slick George Sanders to steal a ship. Meanwhile, Mary and Glenarvan's rakish son, John (Michael Anderson Jr.), engage in flirtatious feuding. The many memorable action sequences are wildly improbable (all the more so watching the nonchalant Chevalier have a go at Indiana Jones-like heroics) and liberally employ old-fashioned process shots, mattes, paintings, and other pre-digital special effects. The incomparable Hyde-White looks as if he's having fun alternately harrumphing and encouraging good old British resolve, while Sanders effortlessly portrays, for the umpteenth time, his brand of enchanting villainy.