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Dax Shepard And Kristen Bell Were Fined For Creating Viral ‘Africa’ Video, Toto Approves Of Their Efforts [Video]

By Treva Bowdoin
Published on: 12:15 PST, Jan 30, 2016

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell were supposed to be on vacation when they visited Africa, but it looks like the actor and actress spent a lot of time working during their holiday. They decided to record their own version of Toto’s “Africa” music video, which means that they had to do a lot of dancing and lip syncing while they admired the local wildlife. They probably also spent a lot of time praying for rain (spoiler alert: they eventually got it).

According to the Los Angeles Times, the amazing vacation video that Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell recently shared with their fans was actually taken a few years ago. When Shepard posted the now-viral video on YouTube, he informed his fans that he and Bell were on their last vacation before having kids. The couple has two daughters, Lincoln (born in 2013) and Delta (born in 2014).

“Since nobody really wants to see the album of your vacation photos… Introducing: the #VacationMusicVideo africa,” Kristen Bell tweeted.

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell apparently decided that the opening library scene of Toto’s “Africa” music video wasn’t sexy enough, so they scrapped it in favor of shots of Dax bathing beside a window, lions looking disinterested, and Kristen doing some rather dramatic shoulder-shimmies. In their “Africa” video, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard aren’t being stalked by a native with spear; instead, they have fun with a hiking stick by pretending it’s a guitar and a b? staff (the fighting stick wielded by Donatello of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

Dax actually convinced their tour guide to join in the fun by goofing off with his binoculars, and the couple really got into their lip syncing when they were finally blessed with some rain to rock out in. The video below also includes awkward dancing in front of hippos, air drumming, giraffe chasing, and a lot of running man.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Dax Shephard and Kristen Bell’s video was shot in Tanzania and Rwanda, and they get to see a lot more of Africa in their music video than Toto did in the original. Dax and Kristen see elephants, gorillas, lions, cheetahs, giraffes, antelope, and wildebeest in their natural habitat, but the only wildlife David Paich encounters in Toto’s “Africa” music video is a stuffed lion head on the library wall where he’s conducting research.

During an interview with Rockcellar magazine, David Paich revealed that he actually hadn’t been to Africa when he wrote “Africa,” and he’s just as confused by the library music video as many Toto fans are.

“For that video, though, we just flew in for a day and the director had an idea for the song,” Paich told Rockcellar. “When I watch it today I think, ‘What were we trying to do there?!'”

You can check out the original video below.

Toto responded to Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell’s take on their music video by tweeting their approval. The band seemingly isn’t jealous that the couple got to shoot their entire video in Africa, but Toto points out that couples everywhere should be envious of Kristen and Dax’s relationship — they’ll make lovers wish they could take some time to do the things they never haaa–aaa–aad.

However, creating the perfect vacation music video can be costly if you don’t know all the local laws where you are filming. During a 2012 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Dax Shepard revealed that he and Kristen Bell got fined for dancing in the Serengeti.

“We wanted to see the wildebeest migrate so we had driven five hours in the car. We finally got to them on the Serengeti, we got out of the car (and) we started doing a dance for this music video,” Shepard said. “We weren’t paying attention and then the Serengeti police showed up and they fined us $50 for dancing at the Serengeti.”

Fans of Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard’s music video can only hope that the next continent they choose to visit is Australia — just imagine how epic it would be if they tried to recreate Men At Work’s kooky “Down Under” music video.

[Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images]

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