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Krippendorf's Tribe (1998) More at IMDbPro »

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8 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
It was funny!, 8 October 2005

Author: brelsa from United States

I laughed a lot at this film! I have always loved Richard Dreyfus, and Jenna Elfman plays her role in this movie with a Lucille Ball-like zaniness. Like Dreyfus she has the ability to play drama as well as comedy. I can't understand how some of the other reviews are so harsh. Maybe you need to know what to expect when you sit down to watch this movie. Don't try to take the story too seriously. For example, if you're an anthropologist in real life, don't try to compare it to reality. Separate yourself from your day job, and don't take the jokes personally. It is a wild and crazy movie that is no more about the real life field of anthropology than "Scrubs" is about medicine. Lighten up, have a beer, relax, and you will enjoy this movie. Slapstick comedy has its place in the entertainment field. Don't spoil it for the rest of us who still enjoy this genre.

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7 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Classic slapstick at its nouveau best, 24 October 1998

Author: Gil Munk from Baltimore, MD

Dreyfuss has always been a master of high humor and KT is another enjoyable vehicle for it. Elfman is funny and vivacious, as well as lovely to look at. Both stars work well together. I laughed throughout; appreciating the movie for what it was meant to be: good comedy. I recommend this film for anyone wanting a lot of good laughs.

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5 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
The Worst Movie of All Time?...Perhaps!, 5 August 1998

Author: Nathan Takeda (ntakeda@hotmail.com) from Santa Cruz, CA

Richard Dreyfuss himself said in an interview before the release of this flick: "(begging)Please go see this movie!...If this movie doesn't do well, it'll be the end of my career." Yes, he actually said this. Very disappointing behavior from an actor so many people once enjoyed watching on screen. I for one am not surprised. Mr. Dreyfuss has been heading down into disgrace for many years now. I would not be immediately opposed to changing my opinion of Mr. Dreyfuss, but for this to happen, he must make some kind of comeback!! But I will watch with anticipation, albeit slight, for this comeback. By the way, did you see how pitiful his expression was when the camera panned by him in the most recent Oscars' past-award-winners-lineup?? The shame he must have been feeling for the horrid Krippendorf's Tribe was very clearly seen (I believe it was in theatrical release at the time of the Oscars).

Well, see this flick if you are 1) into masochism, or 2) into laughing at the downfall of a once great actor (although his ever having reached that level of greatness is highly debatable). Thank you good sirs and madams for your time. Any one who reads this, please feel welcome to email me: ntakeda@hotmail.com I am interested in forming an Anti-Krippendorf's Tribe Group.

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6 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Unbearable Even For Insomniacs, 17 April 2006

Author: mrliteral from United States

It's 2:30 am, I'm lying in bed, and I can't sleep. Flipping through channels, I see a company logo indicating a movie is about to start. Whenever this happens, I am mentally and physically unable to change the channel until I know what the movie is. Seeing that it stars Richard Dreyfuss and Jenna Elfman, I know immediately it is Krippendorf's Tribe, which I remember being advertised but never saw. Not having anything else to do, I keep watching.

That was my first mistake.

The second thing I did wrong was to continue watching past the first commercial break, and on to the end credits. I was completely fascinated by how utterly terrible this movie is. I don't think I've ever seen a movie this awful with so many recognizable, decent actors taking part. Dreyfuss, Elfman, Lily Tomlin, David Ogden Stiers, Stephen Root, Natasha Lyonne, Siobhan Fallon, Elaine Stritch, Tom Poston, Susan Ruttan...all names I know, all actors I've seen before, never in anything this ridiculous and pointless.

During the opening credits, we see Professor Krippendorf and his family in New Guinea, hanging out with a local tribe. Next we see the Professor on his couch two years later watching his video of this trip. It is soon revealed his wife has died, and apparently he has been on this couch ever since, because Jenna Elfman shows up at his door to remind him he has a presentation that night about the lost tribe of New Guinea. She's supposed to be his former student, now fellow professor of anthropology, but she spends the entirety of the movie acting as agent between Krippendorf and a cable network. Sounds like the writer really paid a lot of attention to this character.

So he sits at McDonalds with his unruly children and tries to write a speech for his presentation, but comes up with nothing. When he arrives at the lecture hall, hundreds of people wait for his groundbreaking research to be revealed. Of course, he doesn't have any research. Whatever this lost tribe is, he never found it. So it's still lost. But I'm asking myself, what lost tribe? I just saw the video footage of him with a tribe in New Guinea! Is that not them? If not, who are they? Why are all these people at the lecture hall expecting something of him? If he didn't find anything, why don't they already know that? Where did they get their expectations? Why can't he just say "I didn't find that tribe, and my wife died, and I've been kind of depressed"? Why didn't he tell them that when he got home from New Guinea?

Other stupid questions: Why did he buy a big screen TV with the grant money? Why didn't he use the grant money to pay his mortgage and his bills instead of allowing his home to near foreclosure? Why is he so close to losing his house if he's still on staff at the university? If he has an office and friends there, why don't they have any idea what's been going on with him professionally for the last two years?

I realize a supposedly screwball comedy requires there to be a great deception during the first act, which must then be supported through the third act until all is revealed. That's fine, but as far as the story being told, there is no reason for them to expect anything, so there is no reason to lie. It's my understanding he'd have this presentation to tell them what he found. If he didn't find anything, why can't he say so? Why do they expect something amazing? Who told them something amazing had happened? And why is this business of a "lost tribe" being brought up as if I knew what they were talking about? Is that why he went to New Guinea? To find a lost tribe? Why has this exposition not been supplied to me? All I know is, the movie opened with him talking to members of a tribe, and now he's saying he lost the lost tribe. That makes no sense. None of the first part of the movie makes any sense.

That's only the beginning. The rest of movie is filled with jokes that are either totally inappropriate or just plain fall flat. Jokes about circumcision? Is this the funniest thing they could think of? One of his kids puts on some kind of show and tell about a native girl's first menstruation. Why? The only good thing about this scene is the one-line role of a young Mila Kunis as his classmate playing the native girl. He's even unwrapping a bloody cloth in the next scene. I just don't see the point, or the humor.

Nothing in this movie is funny. Everything plays like a bad old sitcom at best. Three minor positive notes: One - the aforementioned Mila Kunis, who has a spectacular voice, though as I said she only has one line, but it was nice to see her. Two - Jenna Elfman's butt. In her underwear. Not exactly a reason to see a movie, but if you are watching the movie, it's there in a pair of brief scenes; yes that pun was intended. Three - cinematographer Dean Cundey, always a pro with the pretty pictures. Why he chose to work on this movie, I'm sure I'll never know. I hope they paid him handsomely.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Smooth Deception? Hardly. But An Enjoyable Endeavor All The Same., 13 May 2007

Author: Fiendish_Dramaturgy from .: Fiendish Writings in the Dark :.

Richard Dreyfus. An anthropologist creates a fake New Guinea tribe to further his career.

This sounded like it would be painful to watch, and in some places, it is just that. but overall, this bears an endearing tone, and a genuine humor, which consistently colors the work, throughout.

Dreyfus's character, Krippendorf, is a frantic/manic anthropologist who tries to seem as though he is calm and collected, on the surface of the deception he has laid. Dreyfus is a phenomenal actor, who needs another Jaws/Close Encounters to revitalize his career. I wonder if Spielberg is listening? His performances come off as direct projections from the heart, no matter how low the budget they allow him, or what horrendous costars they saddle him with.

This work features a quirky story line with quirky subplots, and quirky characters, but none as enigmatic as Krippendorf himself.

This is a great way to spend a couple of hours, but as a Disney movie? Disney rewrites known history to suit its ends, and usually does so with great panache, but the return to ethnocentrism is potentially damaging to the field of anthropology. However, if you can suspend belief, which you must do to enjoy any Disney movie, then you may find the enjoyment from it that I did, but as usual, I'm in the minority.

It rates a 7.1/10 from...

the Fiend :.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Good cast, substandard film, 6 May 2007

Author: NxNWRocks

It should be obvious from the outset that this is one of those one-joke movies that will struggle to stretch the laughs out to feature-length proportions. It has the same effect as watching one of those Saturday Night Live sketches that seem funny at first but get dragged out way past the point where the humor has been exhausted and what remains is a sense of embarrassment for the actors.

The biggest problem is the huge suspension of disbelief required to accept – even at a basic, unrealistic level - the preposterous central idea. Although there have been real-life academic and journalistic shams, this film never pretends to be rooted in any kind of realism, but the material is so weak that even wringing slapstick out of it is a challenge, resulting in some kind of unfunny vacuum for the most part.

It's a shame that all concerned didn't attempt to do anything a little more serious with it. Scattered here and there in the script are some telling comments on the clash of cultures and relative benefits and drawbacks of two types of civilization – the hurried lives of cosmopolitan America and the more basic, living-with-nature life in rural South America. Even those few scraps are a wealth of depth compared to the awfully shallow "Jungle 2 Jungle."

The greatest mystery may be how such a quality cast was lured to such a substandard production. Dreyfuss does his best to carry the film – and this is a good exhibit for his merits as a comic actor, for few others could coax laughs out of such patchy material. Those around him do as well as can be expected, most notably some great lines from Phil Leeds in a cameo towards the end, which is one of the very few rewards for sticking with it to the closing credits.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Terrible acting; blame it on worse script, 17 December 2006

Author: BLBfootballs from Washington DC, United States

This movie is achingly bad, and may well leave you thirsting for spiritual and cinematic salvation.

It's tempting to blame the low quality on the abysmal acting, but the abysmal acting is surely the product of the even worse script. Saturated with one-liner duds, 10-liner clunkers and painfully feigned scenes, this movie could be usefully employed in screen writing schools as an example of what not to force your actors to try and portray on screen. I'm disappointed that Richard Dreyfus agreed to take this movie, though a senior academic role could have suited his acting abilities well. Instead he pumps a heinous "performance" as a simply execrable poseur (we're supposed to sympathize with this guy...right?)--the quality of whose character corresponds well to the cringe-inducing wretchedness of the writing. Every other character in this movie is a paint-by-numbers cardboard figurine.

The audience suffers through a ride at least as irritating as the one endured by the (humorously-named?) professor's colleagues. Unfortunately the audience sees each rusty step approaching from miles away, preventing us from at least sharing in the colleagues' mild palliative of "surprise". As with many other bad movies this one was banking on a potentially humorous idea that, uh, doesn't quite work out. This movie is of the variation of bad that precludes even enjoying laughing at its radiant badness. Trust me, there will be no laughter. Every part of the movie, from the chokeworthy "jokes" to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones ska tracks suggests a kind of "ironic" self-referential "humor" that we're all (for some reason) supposed to be joining in on. Note to directors: next time please drop the "irony" and just aim for humor. Judging from this movie, that alone would be no small accomplishment! I almost can't believe this thing was released into theaters.

If you paid money to see this in a theater or rent it on video...well I'm just sorry. I would expect to see this as a staple of UHF stations' low-powered weekend afternoon matinées for some years to come. But hopefully not for too long!

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
pass this film right on by, 3 September 2006
Author: Dr. Michael Hollywood from United States

Richard Dreyfuss and Jenna Elfman made a very stupid mistake when they decided to add their names to "Krippendorf's Tribe," a disastrous film.

"Krippendorf's Tribe" is the type of film that falls under the category of mistake. The script, costumes and performances of the leads, Richard Dreyfuss and Jenna Elfman were all factors that drew me to this conclusion. Even the supposed romance between Dreyfuss and Elfman was a mistake as they had no chemistry.

I gave this film my full attention for 90 minutes but it didn't live up to what I was expecting. One thing I noticed lacking from this film was comedy, true comedy. The jokes were poor, futile attempts at laughs. Furthermore, I don't remember laughing at all and if I did it was at them instead of with them.

It was a sad sight to watch respectable actors such as Dreyfuss and walk around in awful outfits and star in this awful film. I'm really sorry I wasted my time on this film. The razzies were correct in making this the dullest comedy of 1998. They should have given worst actor awards to Dreyfuss and Elfman as well.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
This is a family film?, 8 October 2004
Author: Blueghost from the San Francisco Bay Area

I think not.

With all the adult references and situations in this thing I have a real hard time understanding why anyone would take their kid to see it. OK, it involves a "family," or rather a widower with three kids, but the buck stops there as far as so-called "family entertainment" goes. People taking their kids to see this film remind me of the same breed of parents who let their kids watch Spin City: The logic being they think it's funny, and because there's no nudity nor "gross" humor in it, it's therefore okay for kids to watch.

Wrong. Kids, like adults, understand words, phrases, gestures, but don't always comprehend their entire context (though they have a hint of the meaning). This is why we have things like Sex-Ed in our schools; to keep them from getting into trouble. But that's neither here nor there, because the films been out since 1998, and most people who were inclined to see it (with or without their children) already have.

As far as a movie on its own I'd give this thing a passing grade. It's really the kind of film that would've been made prior to 1970, where cross cultural understanding was just coming out of its infancy. The formula of a "lost tribe" is a vehicle used in classic comedies (TV and feature film) of eras gone by. In today's age of interconnectivity, just on the most basic level of common sense understanding, it's hard to imagine a tribe of people not having been contacted by modern society. But hey, it's a movie, so anything's possible.

It is a junk film on one level. The humor, for what it is, didn't need to be so blatant, obvious, and mildly blue. There was a real opportunity to create something here, but, as usual, the marketing "geniuses" probably got their hands on the script before either cast or crew, and dictated how many and what kind of jokes were to be in the film. I say that because I have a real hard time believing any intelligent screenwriter would write action and dialogue portrayed in this film... unless hey were a hack B-movie producer.

For all that the story's actually kind of likable, and the general look of the film (bright colors and well lit scenes) is rather pleasing. And the acting is actually quite good. Dreyfuss doing his usual high energy stuff is always fun to see. But the meat of the film, the actual words spoken, actions performed, and one disappointing and obnoxious prop protruding from Dreyfuss'es crotch, leaves much to be desired.

Frank Parkin and Charlie Peters are given the writing credits for this flick. To them I say "Don't quit your day job."

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Razzie worthy, 21 August 2004
Author: Michael Sibley

Richard Dreyfuss and Jenna Elfman made a very stupid mistake when they decided to add their names to "Krippendorf's Tribe," a disastrous film.

"Krippendorf's Tribe" is the type of film that falls under the category of mistake. The script, costumes and performances of the leads, Richard Dreyfuss and Jenna Elfman were all factors that drew me to this conclusion. Even the supposed romance between Dreyfuss and Elfman was a mistake as they had no chemistry.

I gave this film my full attention for 90 minutes but it didn't live up to what I was expecting. One thing I noticed lacking from this film was comedy, true comedy. The jokes were poor, futile attempts at laughs. Furthermore, I don't remember laughing at all and if I did it was at them instead of with them.

I am really sorry I wasted my time on this mistake of a film. The Razzies were correct in making this dullest comedy of 1998. They should have given worst actor awards to Dreyfuss and Elfman as well.

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