"When Comic Book Movies Go Bad"
Oh yes, the movie that has passed into legend in terms of how much it cost compared to how rubbish the final outcome actually was gets a re-release from Fabulous Films. But is it really as bad as people claim?
The film starts with an interesting bit of action. Or at least it would be if someone hadn't decided to put the credits over it. Then we get to feel very sorry indeed for David Hemmings (the actor not the character) before we are introduced to the very very expensive indeed Sean Connery.
Sean is playing H Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain & he's been chosen (although goodness knows why) as the leader of a bunch of nineteenth century literary characters to defeat the evil scheme of the lead singer of Metallica who has presumably been injured in an amp feedback accident.
Richard Roxburgh plays 'M' (oh dear) and plays him as if he's forgotten to stop being the Duke in Baz Luhrmann's MOULIN ROUGE (oh dear oh dear). He introduces the other members of the team. These include token female and Jess Franco tribute Mina Harker (a vampire who can see herself in a mirror, walk around in daylight and she wears a long red scarf. If she's not meant to be a tribute to Soledad Miranda in VAMPYROS LESBOS this film is even less interesting than I thought); a rights issue (presumably H G Wells' estate wouldn't let them use his Invisible Man); Captain Nemo (because they need a ridiculous boat that won't fit up the canals of Venice but somehow does anyway) and...oh I've forgotten the others already. Let me have a look at the picture.
Oh yes! Dorian Gray who is immortal and so are his clothes, it would seem. Dr Jekyll who can turn into the most Looney Tunes version of Mr Hyde ever shown, and Tom Sawyer because, you know, America or something (that last bit the actual words from a script conference I suspect).
Off they go to Venice!
Metallica is busy destroying the city. They save it by destroying even more buildings. But wait! One of them is a spy! And there's even more dastardly work afoot! An evil plan to...
Now this is where I began to lose track of what was going on entirely. I'm not going to spoil it for those who want to watch the film, mainly because I'm not sure if anyone really knew what was going on anyway. But there's snow and a castle and a truly daft looking monster.
Is the graphic novel any good? I don't know as I haven't read it. Is this film any good? Sadly not. In fact it's depressing to see something that looks as if a fortune was spent on every shot, every set and every costume, but not a penny was spent on sorting out a decent rip-roaring story to tell. This is not LXG's only problem - there's a real lack of enthusiasm on the part of some of the cast and some genuinely startling overacting from others.
Fabulous Films' disc also contains some featurettes and a number of deleted and extended scenes if you really want to see more of this once the film has actually finished.
THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN is out on DVD & Blu-ray from Fabulous Films now.
No comments:
Post a Comment