A byproduct of "Mountains of the Moon" lacking the narrative drive to be a successful adventure movie is that it allows for far too much time to contemplate some of the less savory aspects of the genre. To wit, old-timey adventure yarns, be they set in Africa or elsewhere, all too often feature horrible racial stereotypes, and this is no exception, featuring tribespeople identical in every regard to their counterparts in movies seventy-five years ago. There's one conversation between Dev's Shankar and another Indian, in Africa with the British Army, about colonialism, but the story drops the subject immediately, never to return to it.
There's also a distinctly anachronistic attitude toward humanity's relationship with nature, one manifestation of which will get the movie off to a rocky start with any animal lovers. These complaints aren't necessary related to the technical quality of the movie itself, but it's pointless to pretend that we watch movies in a vacuum.