In Search of the Castaways

SINOPSIS

Based on the novel Captain Grant's Children, this was Disney's second dip into the works of Jules Verne, but it can't be compared with the splendid 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Hayley Mills stars as a tigerish teen who ropes Maurice Chevalier and Wilfrid Hyde White into helping search for her missing father. But, as the action moves from South America to Australia, the cast becomes increasingly irrelevant as director Robert Stevenson subjects it to all manner of natural disasters - the studio seeking to show off its special-effects department, perhaps? Unfortunately, the effects have dated badly and the meandering story rarely thrills.