Escape from Atlantis

You gotta love the cheesy low budget movies. This one comes complete with bad effects, props and bad acting (really bad). Plus, every time I see Mercedes McNab (the sister) I keep thinking 'Watch out! She's a vamp!"- for those that know Buffy/Angel.

A perfect example of what happens when someone with bad taste and wants to waste money making a flick, the little that was spent of course. I don't know if I feel more sorry for the writer of the movie or the producer who didn't make back any money.

I'd say it's good for little kids in it's simplicity, but I don't know if I'd want to subject a kid to it...

umm...1/10 because that's the lowest it will go.

Escape from Atlantis is the best of the bad. I myself have seen it a few times just because I love it so much. Is the storyline predictable? Yes! Is the acting shabby? Absolutely! Are the characters clichéd? You betcha! Is it more fun to watch than most other crappy sci-fi/fantasy movies? Oh yeah! This is not the kind of movie you watch if you want to be dazzled by special effects or blinded by brilliance, but it is the kind of movie you watch if you just want to have some fun laughing at an incredibly shoddy piece of work. When one watches this movie, one has to wonder if the writer of the screenplay and the director deliberately made it so bad. If you don't appreciate this movie for its crap value, you don't get the joke.

My kids (14 and 11) laughed all the way through. Note: this is NOT a comedy. Some parts kind of grab you but this is really very campy. I was surprised to see this make the STARZ lineup. Still entertaining in an off sort of way.

The acting is mostly borderline amateur. Some of the lines delivered by Kristina Roper combined her hand gestures resulted in howling laughter. At times Kristina's acting was serviceable. She is stunningly beautiful. In one fight scene where Kristina is supposed to be attacking with a whip, her style looks more like she's doing a ring toss. Really great fun.

Speakman, the Dad, shows considerable prowess with swords. But most of the fight scenes are crazy low production. The action scenes being several levels below the original Lost in Space.

I know it's a Power-Rangers gimmick and catered to 7 year olds but really why were they taking themselves seriously with this movie? If they are going to write a plot with crayons, at least have the decency to make it silly. It's kind of hilarious if you watch this. We have a typical family filled with cliched characters (father a war veteran who lost his wife and blames himself LOLOL), air-head children trying to hard to fill the stereotype but fails with horrendous acting, and a laughably horrid sidekick who serves no purpose to the movie but to fill camera space. Funny stuff!

However, the real great moment comes near the end when war-dad and bad-acting-villain try to work a sword fight, but then they realize none of them know how to (probably because no room in budget for choreographers), so they come up with this American Gladiator type setting to run around in. LOL.

1/10 rating because they try to treat this seriously.

While the overall idea of Escape from Atlantis was intriguing, I found the film to be far less than what I had hoped for upon reading the plot summery. Perhaps I am too much of a child in the technological age: the movie was made, as it is now 2002, an official five years ago --after viewing fantasy epics such as Lord of the Rings, and science fiction feats like Star Wars, as a whole it could not compare to other movies of similar line such as Dinotopia or Homer's The Odyssey.

My beef, basically, is that I couldn't relate --I am just about the same age of the children (a young adult), and have no trouble putting myself in the place of a middle-aged man if that is the character available. But the picture did not take me to a different mental plain of existence. I didn't find myself saying 'ACK! I would have done the SAME thing!'. It did not open the doors to my imagination. Even without comparing it to high-budget films or other TV movies, standing alone, certain aspects of the feature I found to be cliche: The character development in the children occurred too rapidly for my liking, seeing too much of the stereotypical selfish-teenager-bitter-after-divorce image changing into the we're-a-big-happy-family-let's-never-separate-again feel that can ultimately make or break a picture in the long run. Even the characters themselves could have undergone improvement: a typical set of one or the other stereotypes. There was the ever-present selfish beauty looking to be rebellious, accompanied by Mr. Perfect image of combining athletics, good looks and intelligence yet a brooding attitude, and lastly the smart-aleck little brother we find to be so common these days. While I know the personalities pushed the story along, I think that adding more individuality as far as nuances and more unique differences would have made it a more enjoyable --and believable (as far as character)-- movie.

I do have to raise my glass to the costume and set design --that made it worth finishing to the end for me. Don't get me wrong: all movies are worth seeing for yourself, and the opinion of one could never account for the opinion of many, but I think that with a little more depth to the script, and a little more (I cannot believe I am saying this) realness I dare say Escape from Atlantis could have been magical.