Ar - Il Segreto Della Miniera

Was not sure what to expect when I watched this, but I was not expecting the greatest of films and it certainly lived up to those lofty expectations! A film where all the stuff that would have made a reasonably cool film are merely hinted at while we get to see the very mundane stuff. Yes, welcome to the world of extremely low budget family friendly fantasy!

The story, well grandma reads kids a story that is packed full of action from the sounds of it, but has no impact as we witness nothing and hear it all. The grandchildren look ready to pass out from boredom. Then a car speeds down the road as the kids and their parents are going to live in a village that looks like a movie set. Seriously, a faker looking town you could not find. They are unwanted guests as Malcolm McDowell assaults the two kids and warns of impending doom, while dad comes down with some sort of ailment that is going to kill them and there are faeries that the girl sees, but has little to no interaction with, but she trusts them implicitly.

It is always cool seeing Malcolm McDowell in a film, but not sure he is the right guy for this job. I mean, he acts his usual self scaring children and nearly knocking a fairy's head off with a shovel, but this is a family film, so those things seem out of place. Then there is Corbin who plays the role with no subtleness coughing to let us know something is wrong and then going ballistic when there may be gold on the property. The kids and mom do alright for a film of this type, sometimes getting a named actor just to get people to view your movie is not the right move.

So we get father and his kids working side by side in a dangerous mine where there is a hole that looks several hundred feet deep. A crazy lunatic that warns of death and bully children that were apparently chasing the son of the family...I seriously had no idea what the deal was with them until they yelled, "Get him!" It is just a very poor story with very strange shifts in plot and direction. Not the worst movie ever, but needed a lot of work to be considered okay.

I thought that I would enjoy the movie because it featured Malcolm McDowell, one of my favorite actors. I was quite wrong. I would never believe that so good an actor could be so tainted by the surrounding cast.

Aside from the horrible production quality (boom mic dipping down in the opening scene, BAMBOO AND PALM TREES in the "english forest"), the plot is subtle as a mack truck and the whole thing is stupid beyond words. Some of the characters even drift in and out of their accents.

I kept hoping that at some point, McDowell's character would kill and eat the family to liven things up. Never happened. Oh, Malcolm, how could you?

Unbelievable lame production, worst special effects and horrible story line, the worst by far of any pictures I have ever seen. If you need a reference for lame, this is it!!!! Malcolm McDowell and Corbin Bernstein should really erase this from their portfolio!!!

I watched 'The Fairy King Of Ar' and thought it was a good movie to be watched by all the family!

I like the idea of the story line and the special effects were very good!

All in all it was a well Directed family movie!

I would guess one of the dreadful things about being an actor is that you can't ever take your name off your work. Directors can hide behind pseudonyms, producers can blame the director, and everyone else can throw up their hands and blame everyone else for letting them down. The actors however are stuck there up there, on screen for all the world to see, unable to hide from the awfulness that surrounds them. And this movie is awful.

Most of the blame lies with the direction - not that there appears to have been any, and a script that may well have been, judging from what arrives on the screen, little more than a rough outline, semi-improvised by the actors as they were shooting. The whole thing looks like it was shot in single, unrehearsed takes with no one having bothered to tell the cast and the few background artists what was going on or what they were supposed to be doing.

In short it looks like an amateur production and I can't begin to guess at the behind the scenes events that left reliably professional jobbing actors like Corbin Bernsen*, Glynis Barber, and Malcolm McDowell so helplessly adrift; I occasionally work with youth drama groups and have seen more conviction from bored High School kids than is on display here. Still, I guess the principals all got a nice holiday in South Africa out of it - though I don't suppose anyone involved in this turd will be including any part of it in their show reels.

Having said all that my hyper-imaginative, six year old, fairy loving daughter was hooked throughout and genuinely terrified during the 'climactic' trapped-in-the-mine sequence, and even my four year old got 'the message'.

*Bernsen also has to suffer the indignity of most incredibly underwritten, non-specific terminal disease in the history of movies since the Production Code of the thirties prevented anyone from mentioning the clap.