Not good enough. Considering the interesting talent amassed for William Boyd's screen adaptation of his own nicely mordant 1981 novel, a variation on the stuffy-white-colonial-undone-by- mysterious-black-Africa theme, this production, directed by Bruce Beresford, is disappointingly tired, unfunny, and disengaged. Sean Connery plays the title role, an altruistic doctor in a fictional country just getting on its feet; Colin Friels is the narrator, a mid-level bureaucrat nonplussed by his mission. With Diana Rigg, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Louis Gossett Jr., and, in the film's only display of the nutty gung-hoism needed to make this creaky thing work, John Lithgow as a British high commissioner whose idea of bang-up relaxation is watching old newsreels of Her Majesty on the job. D+
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