One would think, after all these years, that I would know better than to take my husband's recommendations for movies. But, no. I went with him last night to see "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."
It blew. It blew large, frothy chunks. What unadulterated, misbegotten crap with a side order of dreck.
There was a plot... just less of one than the comic book on which it was based.
There were recognizable characters, but only by name, and only if you'd read a lot of Victorian-era literature, or at least had seen the movies based on those books. Having said that, only the names were familiar, because the characters were mere caricatures of the originals. And original this shlock was not.
How anyone with even a passing knowledge of "Tom Sawyer" would extrapolate that wild youth in to a "Wild, Wild West"-style government agent speaks to the theory of alcohol abuse or pre-frontal lobotomy.
Mina Harker, the widow of Jonathan Harker of "Dracula" fares no better. She has become a, uh, um, chemist? scientist of nebulous specificity. She is also a daylight-dwelling vampire with never-healing neck wounds. Mina also makes dubious wardrobe choices, appearing alternately in widow's weeds with a net veil (I'm guessing that passes for her sunscreen), a marvelously tooled black leather corset and an 1890's stenographer's white middy blouse and walking skirt -- worn with her long hair loose, which, as any indifferent student of the era can tell you, was acceptable only for young, un-married virgins.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the house: Jekyll with red-rimmed eyes and an ability to see (and talk to) Mr. Hyde in mirrors and other reflective surfaces. Hyde himself wears a top hat made to fit, despite the fact that the rest of his costume is shredded like the Hulk's clothes after a transformation. In one of the more jarring stylistic anachronisms, Mr. Hyde also looks like he was designed by Todd Mcfarlane. When one of the bad guys drinks the Hyde juice (an entire retort of it in one face-wetting, Gator-Aide style splash) he becomes more Hyde-like than Hyde, and his head and neck appear to be sprouting from somewhere around his sternum. That's when I started laughing and my husband had to poke me and tell me to be quiet, not everyone in the theater wanted to be informed as to the exact points of suckiness.
Alan Quartermain, Dorian Gray, Moriarty and Captain Nemo all make appearances, as does *an* invisible man, but not *the* Invisible Man. This invisible man even refers to "the franchise." Ugh. The dialogue, such as it is, relies heavily on late 20th century American slang.
The star of this mess is probably the Nautilus, Nemo's ship. (And remind me again how Nemo became an Indian, a pirate and a worshipper of Kali?) This is not the Nautilus from Disney's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." No, this a Nautilus the length of a 7th Fleet aircraft carrier and the width of an original VW bug. Except on the inside, in true fantasy film form, where it is incredibly spacious and impeccably white. Despite its size, the Nautilus is capable of navigating the canals of Venice, going so far as to be seen passing under the Bridge of Sighs.
That was when my mind overloaded from the impossibility of it all, and so I cannot explain how the League went from Venice to Inner Mongolia where they destroyed a lot of things and, uh, beat the bad guys (Moriarty and Gray) and lived (?) happily (?) ever after. Except for Gray, who saw his portrait and the evil transferred from it to him and caused him to spontaneously discorporate, and Moriarty who gets shot in the back from half a mile away and goes down, and Quartermain, who may be dead and buried (back in Africa), but who may not stay that way, because there's a witch doctor doing the hoodoo that he do so well over the grave and then thunder splits the sky and the credits roll.
And then so did my stomach, and not from the popcorn.
It blew. It blew large, frothy chunks. What unadulterated, misbegotten crap with a side order of dreck.
There was a plot... just less of one than the comic book on which it was based.
There were recognizable characters, but only by name, and only if you'd read a lot of Victorian-era literature, or at least had seen the movies based on those books. Having said that, only the names were familiar, because the characters were mere caricatures of the originals. And original this shlock was not.
How anyone with even a passing knowledge of "Tom Sawyer" would extrapolate that wild youth in to a "Wild, Wild West"-style government agent speaks to the theory of alcohol abuse or pre-frontal lobotomy.
Mina Harker, the widow of Jonathan Harker of "Dracula" fares no better. She has become a, uh, um, chemist? scientist of nebulous specificity. She is also a daylight-dwelling vampire with never-healing neck wounds. Mina also makes dubious wardrobe choices, appearing alternately in widow's weeds with a net veil (I'm guessing that passes for her sunscreen), a marvelously tooled black leather corset and an 1890's stenographer's white middy blouse and walking skirt -- worn with her long hair loose, which, as any indifferent student of the era can tell you, was acceptable only for young, un-married virgins.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the house: Jekyll with red-rimmed eyes and an ability to see (and talk to) Mr. Hyde in mirrors and other reflective surfaces. Hyde himself wears a top hat made to fit, despite the fact that the rest of his costume is shredded like the Hulk's clothes after a transformation. In one of the more jarring stylistic anachronisms, Mr. Hyde also looks like he was designed by Todd Mcfarlane. When one of the bad guys drinks the Hyde juice (an entire retort of it in one face-wetting, Gator-Aide style splash) he becomes more Hyde-like than Hyde, and his head and neck appear to be sprouting from somewhere around his sternum. That's when I started laughing and my husband had to poke me and tell me to be quiet, not everyone in the theater wanted to be informed as to the exact points of suckiness.
Alan Quartermain, Dorian Gray, Moriarty and Captain Nemo all make appearances, as does *an* invisible man, but not *the* Invisible Man. This invisible man even refers to "the franchise." Ugh. The dialogue, such as it is, relies heavily on late 20th century American slang.
The star of this mess is probably the Nautilus, Nemo's ship. (And remind me again how Nemo became an Indian, a pirate and a worshipper of Kali?) This is not the Nautilus from Disney's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." No, this a Nautilus the length of a 7th Fleet aircraft carrier and the width of an original VW bug. Except on the inside, in true fantasy film form, where it is incredibly spacious and impeccably white. Despite its size, the Nautilus is capable of navigating the canals of Venice, going so far as to be seen passing under the Bridge of Sighs.
That was when my mind overloaded from the impossibility of it all, and so I cannot explain how the League went from Venice to Inner Mongolia where they destroyed a lot of things and, uh, beat the bad guys (Moriarty and Gray) and lived (?) happily (?) ever after. Except for Gray, who saw his portrait and the evil transferred from it to him and caused him to spontaneously discorporate, and Moriarty who gets shot in the back from half a mile away and goes down, and Quartermain, who may be dead and buried (back in Africa), but who may not stay that way, because there's a witch doctor doing the hoodoo that he do so well over the grave and then thunder splits the sky and the credits roll.
And then so did my stomach, and not from the popcorn.