choatelodge

I wish it were otherwise. I'm Canadian and I love the source material, the gold rush days of the turn of the 19th to 20th century, the characters of the time, and the setting. I had high hopes for this film and it started out wonderfully, what with the paddle wheeler filled with eager miners landing at a well portrayed Skagway. I forgave the movie makers for inserting the dognapped Buck from one of London's stories, but the manner in which the dog was introduced set the stage for the movie's failing: simplistic one dimensional characters of unlikely and unlikeable makeup and a nonsensical plot. Jack London is a sullen, petulant and uncooperative member of his little partnership, with his more well grounded partner always trying and failing to make his impetuous protégé see reason and to get on with the trips purpose. The card sharp, whom London outplays for $500 ($25,000 in today's money!) is at first suitably sullen and angry and yet next thing you know and for the rest of the movie, he's a happy go lucky friendly fellow adventurer!

The bad guys are baby kicking bad (well, dog kicking), with no apparent other purpose or goal than to be bad guys. Soapy Smith is presented as just evil and venal, hardly historically accurate nor fair, and I almost laughed when Soapy's right hand man in malfeasance, the dog handler, was introduced and he is made up to look just like Popeye's nemesis, Brutus! Yup, I get it, that's the bad guy.

The movie loses its momentum shortly after the characters set off for the gold fields. I found myself thinking, 'OK, come on, what's happening? Let's go.' I noticed my wife had started playing on her cell phone. The movie's pace had stalled and in increasing measure the followers needed to employ suspension of disbelief.

Somehow, up the Chilkoot Pass. a trail that we have seen can barely be negotiated on foot, a stage coach appears (!) with three dance hall 'ladies' accompanied by the now cheery gambler. Should I mention the remarkably unlikely part that follows, where all travelers in their various groups are stopped at a waterway and while we have been made to understand that there is a great hurry on all parts to get to the gold fields, they all take the time to build boats entirely from the surrounding standing timber? Or the remarkable scene where the women are stranded on shore and call out for rescue to London and his partner in their passing boat? They say the gambler has taken off down river on foot to look for help, as their boat was stolen! (if he can hike down river then why on earth was it necessary for all those travelers to build boats?) Once the Jack London boat has negotiated the swift water with the women on board, that the gambler had evidently skirted on foot, there he appears and somehow he has the boat again!

In fact a great deal of the movie Klondike Fever requires suspension of disbelief, and while this is not an unusual requirement in movie watching circles, too much of it detracts from the experience and the production starts to appear cartoonish. I suppose that with Brutus as a bad guy, that was to be expected.

I gave this series an honest try, as the premise intrigued me: a world in which electricity has stopped working. This series however appears to either be made for a target audience whose IQ is no greater than the speed limit on American highways, or is made by writers and directors who express an overriding contempt for their viewers. I understand the need to give a certain amount of leeway via suspension of disbelief in order to advance a story that is set in proposed 'interesting times', but this one requires the viewer to accept so many implausible events and circumstances that ones tolerance of the incredible is reached and exceeded almost immediately. The protagonist who obviously is in on the know about the pending catastrophe, is almost immediately killed, and the brother whom he'd attempted to call at the time of the event just happens to be the toughest guy on the planet, and get this, the friend in his car at the time of the catastrophe just happens to become the head honcho of the new para-military regime, he's the new Sheriff of Nottingham.

The pretty but remarkably naive daughter Charlie happens to collect postcards of the prominent cities of the world. A motor home she and the brother explore happens to have a same size Chicago Wrigley field postcard, and that city happens to be where they go, and they happen to find it exactly at the spot the postcard depicts, there the first person they meet and ask after in this teeming and lawless metropolis happens to be the very man they are searching for. (go figure) And he is indeed 'good at killing people' according to the dying brother's description. With just a sword he is capable of killing a room full of attackers armed with both swords and long guns! Meanwhile the protagonist, just prior to his capture and killing, passes to a most unlikely fat geeky bespecticled ex-dot com millionaire character, the McGuffin: A little amulet thing with a USB port.

Oh, and the whiny Justin Beiber lookalike brother who is captured in lieu of the protagonist, well he manages to escape and make his way across the countryside for a while, and who's home does he find in all the world? That of the woman to whom the McGuffin is to be taken! Yeah, that'll happen.

Everywhere there are warriors armed with swords. Makes you wonder who's making all these swords? And if the metallurgy exists for these to be made then why can't cartridges be made for the many guns that must still exist? That would detract from the bow and sword world the writers want to advance, I guess. And speaking of swords, when oh when will the makers of movies ever come to the understanding that five and ten minute long sword fights with all the acrobatic twirling and clanging up and down stairs and around posts, is not thrilling? Not thrilling at all! They are boring. Audiences have had it up to their eyebrows with sword fights that consist of swords clanging off each other like the dinner bell in a logging camp. Stop it already.

I lasted for two episodes of this tripe and I have had my fill. It isn't going to get any better.