Whether C. S. Forester had his salty British tongue in his cheek when he wrote his extravagant story of romance and adventure, "The African Queen," we wouldn't be able to tell you. But it is obvious—to us, at least—that Director John Huston was larking when he turned the novel into a film….

[The movie] is a slick job of … hoodwinking with a thoroughly implausible romance, set in a frame of wild adventure that is as whopping as its tale of off-beat love. And the main tone and character of it are in the area of the well-disguised spoof.

This is not noted with disfavor. Considering the nature of the yarn, it is hard to conceive its presentation in any other way—that is in the realistic channels of the motion-picture screen. For Mr. Forester's fable of love suddenly taking bloom in the hearts of a lady...