Lost in the Pacific

Well people, another day, another crappy movie hitting our shores. Actually, this was filmed on our shores – Pinewood Iskandar Studios in Johor, to be exact, so I guess that's something. That's about it for the praises.

If writer-director Vincent Zhou intended for this to show the world what Chinese cinema is made of, he has failed. The People's Republic has been kind to cineastes and mainstream movie-goers alike in the past decade, ranging from the beautifully thought-provoking (Jia Zhangke's "A Touch of Sin"), to the big and bombastic (John Woo's mega-blockbuster "Red Cliff"), even veering off into the hysterical (Stephen Chow's recent "The Mermaid"). They do not need to cater to Western audiences at all – rather, it is the Western bigwigs that need to learn how to market these films properly. After all, if Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" can gross over US$100 million in the United States alone, why can't others, right?

Alas, my plea falls on deaf ears, and here we are, relegated to a C- movie starring struggling actors and made by a filmmaker who apparently conceded to the "everyone-watches-only-English-movies" mentality. Imagine a Muppet Babies version of "Snakes on a Plane" and TV's "Lost" meshed together in an unholy mess; sprinkle some stilted English dialogue ("She died so horribLE. .. so tragicALLY") and some truly bad and overdone VFX, the kind that's as half-assed as those in "A Sound of Thunder" if not worse. In this day and age, are mutant cats scary at all, especially if they look like an evil version of Jiji from "Kiki's Delivery Service"?

Hell, the film even goes so far as to hiring attractive Chinese stars like Zhang YuQi to dress up the nonexistent plot (she tries, dammit), but I must confess, dear reader, to feeling a little sad for still-hunky ex-Superman Brandon Routh, who's film career is relegated to thankless roles such as this - a nonsensical riff on Steven Seagal's "Under Siege" character. Was "Superman Returns" really that toxic?

Sci-Fi Channel this ain't.

Was not expecting an awful lot from 'Lost in the Pacific'. The premise, was willing to overlook its lack of originality, was one that could have been intriguing but seemed like it would be one of those cheaply made, implausible and ridiculous kinds of films. The cover also seemed rather cheap and derivative.

'Lost in the Pacific' turned out to be even worse than my fears and can't agree more with the poor reviews here, have nothing really to add to what has been covered so well already. Just for the record, giving a film the lowest possible rating is reasonably rare for me these days, trying to be a fair reviewer trying to see the good in everything viewed, though admittedly have become slightly harsher recently. That rating is only reserved for films etc. that look like no effort or heart was put into it and like nobody was trying, a cardinal sin in film but actually not committed all that often. 'Lost in the Pacific' is one such film.

Visually, 'Lost in the Pacific' looks incredibly cheap even for something clearly made on a low budget. It has such a drab look and as an epileptic the constantly over-kinetic camera work and dizzying editing made me feel ill and queasy. Not to mention the continuity errors galore. Even worse are some of the most laughable and pathetic-looking special effects to be seen on celluloid, actually looking they were done as an afterthought and on the small remainder of the money they had left.

Can remember little about the music, which tended to be intrusive, annoying and out of place. The script is so awkward, cheesy and improvisatory-sounding that it is enough to make the toes curl in how awful it is.

There is absolutely nothing thrilling, tense, suspenseful, emotionally investable or fun about the story. The predictability may have been forgivable if the film was actually engaging let alone exciting but it fails to be either throughout, and even coherence is not always a strong suit and that's putting it lightly. 'Lost in the Pacific' is basically non-stop dullness and intelligence-insulting ridiculousness, with unintentional humour because of the excessive cheese, incoherent science, gibberish posing as thought-provoking jargon and increasingly irritating and illogical character behaviours that makes one endear to them even less in a film with not one interesting or rootable character.

Amateur dramatics pantomimes and high school productions have better acting than the near-all-round poor standard seen here. The one saving grace is Brandon Routh, who has presence and does try very hard without trying too much.

Summing up, dreadful (a word not used often by me these days). 1/10 Bethany Cox

I don't know how much they pay Brandon Routh, it must be A LOT for him to participate in this terrible "movie".

Vincent Zhou's last "movie": "Last Flight" starring Ed Westwick, had the exact same plot.

They are the same movie. With the same exact plot. They have the same problems: inconsistent plot line, incoherent script, poor story development, terrible CGI, terrible set, and idiotic lines for characters.

I wonder how much they paid Brandon Routh and Ed Westwick for these terrible project.

Actors please have more taste and guts. Say "no" to stupid Chinese movies.

I feel this was an "interesting" film in neither a good or a bad way. There was something about this budget film that I found interesting and actually wanting to keep me watching it until the end. But to be honest I can't quite work out exactly what it is I liked about it that kept me gripped. Maybe more a film that had a number of elements in just part that I liked than any single element of the film as such.

I didn't think the acting was to bad compared to what others have said. Sure, not great but certainly a mix of characters that I wish the film would have elaborated about each a bit more. Effects were odd at times yet decent at others.

Story was fairly ropey with what I feel was a lack of missing elements such as to the animals creation, the research & researchers and destination of the plane background etc. As well as a few unrealistic situations.

A respectable 5/10 for me as 1 of them films I rather enjoyed yet on paper possibly shouldn't have.

This has got to be one of the worst films ever produced. I have never bothered to write a review before but I found this movie so awful I feel compelled to do so. The story is beyond stupid and horrendous,the majority of the acting is amateurish at best other than Brandon Routh and a few other performances (its unbelievable that he would agree to act in this project, and I can't even understand the majority of what Yuqi Zhang says in English which is what the vast majority of her speaking lines are (not sure why they would hire someone to speak English who clearly can't be understood). I am so disappointed in this movie and would recommend no one waste their time watching it.