Les aventures de Billy Stone: le médaillon sacré

My family & I really enjoyed "The Lost Medallion". There was enough action & plot development to keep 2 adults and a 10 year old entertained for the entire movie. The acting was good, and there were great moral themes. I personally am sick of the action "blockbusters" we see where humanistic themes reign and the heroes are worshiped as gods. This was by no means comparable to the big Hollywood films, the production values & special effects would never compare to that. But it was great to see courage & kindness encouraged in children, there was no bad language & I felt very comfortable letting my 10 year old grandchild watch it. The ending message was positive & uplifting.

As an old GEEZER (I'll be 66 in a little over 2 months) I liked this movie. Having only seen the trailer on-line a couple weeks ago I pre-ordered the BD which I received yesterday and watched last night. It was entertaining and the story (which is for children and adult children like me!) was simple and yet adventurous. The acting was very good all around but it did have a typical stereotypes, fatboy is stumbly bumbly, girl screams too much, the usual for this type of especially Christian oriented movie.

I did not give it a 10 because of what it didn't include: no deleted scenes and there were several if you watch the "Making of...." feature.

No outtakes or blooper real which should be for a movie like this.

No interview with the main villain, Mark Dacascos one of my favorite action actors. Could not believe it!

On a final note: this movie was actually filmed in the summer of 2008 according to Mr. James Hong's own words in the "Making of...." feature. So why the 2013 release date? I imagine it had to do with finances but it does seem strange. I have heard of other movies that were finished and never released still sitting in a studio vault but usually because they are horrible and everyone knew it.

Oh well, sometimes I find pleasure in watching a childishly predictable movie as "The Lost Medallion", filled with unbelievable adventures. A film appropriate for a relaxing Sunday evening. You don't need to be focused constantly. You're not watching so intensely that you accidentally take a bite in your remote control instead of in your ready-made croque monsieur. And it's not such kind of movie that you'll jump up whenever there's a horrible creepy moment.

"The Lost Medallion" is an adventure film especially for the youthful viewers. They'll surely fall asleep with a big smile in the evening and dream about them being the boy who saves an entire island. You certainly shouldn't start paying attention to those immense impossibilities that are offered at any time as there are : finding a medallion in an immeasurable jungle with only a ridiculously small metal detector, a skinny teenage girl who defeats a huge thug with a bang on his ass, sabotaging boats without the gang sitting at a campfire noticing it and then paddling away and they start chasing although they could have easily waded through the water to get to the canoe. And trust me, those youngsters degenerate in true ninja-turtles in the end. It ends, of course, as an episode for some catholic TV-channel with God loving everything and everybody. If you can endure all that, then you'll enjoy a fun adventure film.

It's something similar to "Indiana Jones" but with children as heroes. Even the scene with the medal being pushed across the ground by the swirling crowd while Billy (Billy Unger) and Cobra (Mark Dacascos) trying to catch, resembled the scene where Indiana Jones was grabbing for his antidote. No groundbreaking film, no great acting performance and certainly no Oscar-nomination material. But I bet that many children will enjoy this adventure and they'll keep on enjoying it in their dreams.

I'll keep it for when the time comes that my two kids are old enough to appreciate it. Maybe their comment will be "Jesus dad, what a horrible movies. And you want us to watch this together with you?".

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"The Lost Medallion" is an Indiana Jones-type adventure film for the pre-teen set. It's a tale of a young archaeologist's son who finds a magic medallion that takes him and an orphan girl on a fantastical journey into the past. Or maybe the more apt reference would be to the "Narnia" films, since this one too features a none-too-subtle Christian subtext buried beneath the action-movie surface.

The movie is probably acceptable for its target audience (though I don't want to sell them short), since the violence is kept to a reasonable minimum (though it isn't nonexistent) and the story is filled with the requisite edifying moral messages one expects from works aimed at children. But adults will have a hard time overlooking the corny dialogue, cheesy line-readings, paper-tiger villains, goofball second bananas and lowbrow humor that permeate the film.

Some impressive visuals, though.

We are well used to the stories telling us how the white man always saves the gentle but unwashed, simple-minded and helpless tribes of savages. In this turkey, two white kids do the job. Sure, it doesn't have to make sense since its a story made up for kids, but it shouldn't have to smell that bad either, the colonial era being supposed to be over and all that. Add the fact that the proselytiser who improvises this tale ends it with a dose of religious brainwashing and you'll decide if you want to give your kids that kind of messages.

Aside from this distasteful content, the Lost Medallion is also technically unsatisfying. It's corny, insipid, lacklustre. The kid heroes are your typical annoying brats, not playing the parts of kids their age. Plot holes don't matter here, since real children, the intended audience, must be too stupid to notice or care if events make sense. Some beautiful sceneries are pretty much all that's left to enjoy.