Even a stellar performance by Harrison Ford as Allie Fox, an increasingly unbalanced inventor and crusader cannot make up for the downward slide at the end of this drama or for the need to probe a little further into the characters of Fox's son Charlie (River Phoenix) and his wife (Helen Mirren). After Fox's invention of an ice-making machine that runs without electricity is snubbed by the commercial world, he takes action on his disenchantment with materialistic, consumer-oriented American culture, sells his home, and moves to a fictional Caribbean island with his family. There he exhorts everyone to live off what nature provides and starts to set up his concept of an ideal environment. In the meantime, a pesky preacher on the island, capricious Mother Nature, and his family's growing discontent with his increasing obsessions are the first signs that this idyll is anything but.
