30,000 Leagues Under the Sea

So, another movie from the infamous Asylum. A film studio who pound out these "Mockbuster" movies that are low budget rip offs of big Hollywood titles and release them at the same time to cash in on their popularity.

For example

The Day the Earth Stood Still > The Day the Earth Stopped Pacific Rim > Atlantic Rim Aliens vs Predator > Aliens vs Hunter Snakes on a Plane > Snakes on a Train High School Musical > Sunday School Musical

You get the idea. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact they're so incredibly dire!

I'm sure I don't need to say what 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a "Mockbuster" of but rest assured it doesn't use much of the material. A couple of character names (One they fail to pronounce correctly) and the Nautilus and that's as far as it goes. The entire movie is an embarrassingly bad entirely original story that has nothing to do with Jules Verne's classic works.

I've been binge watching every adaptation and this is the last one, what a way to end it on an absolute bottom of the barrel low.

It looks terrible, the cast are pitiful and this actually manages to be bad even for an Asylum feature. Bad, bad, bad.

The Good:

I like the bit where it ended

The Bad:

Expectedly poorly made

Some embarrassingly bad sound balancing in places

In no way is it based on Vernes work

Dreadfully paced

Cast are less than competent

Quite possibly the worst film I've ever seen. Made me laugh though, for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to invoice the the cinema for letting me watch it! Continuity was all over the place. I failed to understand how some of the characters got hurt or appeared and disappeared, maybe I fell asleep though. If I was one of the actors, I'd have given my fee back and asked for the masters so I could have those sink to the bottom of the ocean too.

Will these guys work again? Should we create a '30,000 Leagues Actors Charity'? Who will support their families?

I gave them a score of one as I couldn't select zero. Shame for Jules though, he must be turning in his grave. Some excrement floats, some excrement sinks, this sank right to the bottom.

Straight-to-video movie about Captain Nemo.

Horrible movie that toys with viewers by connecting it to 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. All the characters in the first 30 minutes were a real turn-off but I stayed with it in the hope that it might improve once Captain Nemo turned up, I was wrong - it got worse!

There have been many Nemo actors over the decades (James Mason, Jose Ferrer, etc) and they were all fine. But this "30,000 Leagues Nemo" looks like some unemployed actor they found in the street.

Unwatchable rubbish.

Well, don't expect anything near the previous versions of Jules Verne adventure. Aside from the title and the recycling of names, this "updated" story is a total disappointment. Contrived story line, horrible dialog, horrible plot, and even worse acting. This is a dog fish if ever there was one. Real shame too, they could have done so much more with this premise if they'd only tried. It's like a really bad Deep Space Nine episode, only torturous drawn out and pointless. I gave it 3 stars out of pity. Don't waste your time with this one. The best description of this would be Dr. Strangelove meets Jaques Coustou, only without any of the humor or cinematography of either.

Where to begin...where to begin.This movie is just plain bad...all bad. Every underwater scene looks unrealistic, the effects are terrible. I guess they really loved that low budget "light shining through a fish tank " trick since they used it in every scene possible. To bad there is no light as such at that depth. With the money they obviously saved in the F/X department you would have thought that they could have hired some decent actors. This movie was doomed the instant they put Lamas' name on it. The acting is stale, forced and very poorly scripted. Lorenzo Lamas' performance is pretty much like all his others...horrible. As for the rest of the crew they knew nothing of actual military procedures, terminology, proper dress code, etc..and I've seen better acting from an elementary school play (much, MUCH better in fact...and the sets looked better!)

Furthermore, it seems that everything that could be wrong with this movie...was. First, the Scotia "nuclear" sub with a bridge the size of a walk in closet?...wrong. It also had the steering and navigation controls of a 60's diesel submarine. Most of the "navy" crew walked around in ARMY rank.(There are no full bird colonels in the navy) Also, the navy lieutenants wear 2 bars (exactly like army captain's bars) as their rank. And for some reason "captain" Nemo wore a mix of US Army Major General rank, what appears to be an air force aviators device and a mix of army and air force commendations...and as the sole leader of this underwater waste of time who would give him commendations?

And, one would think if they had the "advanced technology" available, like the pointless "bubble-hammock", that they could have at least tried to make ANYTHING else look high tech. look at the scene where Lamas and crew are first aboard the nautilus...the bulk heads are made of plywood and they're CROOKED! Like any sub would be built this badly? Puh-lease.

Whatever you do ,don't rent this action-less, mindless, thoughtless and useless cinematic piece of bargain bin leftovers. You'd have a much better time watching paint dry. We can only hope that somewhere out there is a movie company willing to do a remake such as this the CORRECT way with all the attention and budget requirement's it deserves...and keep the "20,000" in the title. There's nothing impressive about changing one digit to further indicate how far you've sunk.