Mickey Matson e la macchina alchemica

I really liked Sully, and Mickey is pleasant enough and quite smart. Patrika Darbo shows intelligence and determination. Ernie Hudson does a great job and also shows courage. And Christopher Lloyd does his usual good job in flashbacks.

The actors playing the Southerners are another matter. Rick Plummer is good as their leader. The bald man is funny and pretty good. The man with long hair, though, seems to lack talent and delivers laughs just because he is such a moron.

As the Patriots and Copperheads now must fight to determine who controls the Alchemy Machine, we can feel confident. The Southerners who robbed the bank are like the Three Stooges.

This is an interesting mystery even if it occasionally turns violent.

This film was so much fun to watch with our kids. Everyone enjoyed it from the grandmas and grandpas to the littlest kids. There was adventure, action, suspense, and camaraderie. There was no foul language, just good clean fun.

The bad guys were really bad without being nightmarish and the good guys, well, they were just as cute as could be.

There was great camera action and the special effects were masterful. The story was plausible as if it could actually have been true and bringing in the historical aspect was a good way to get kids interested in the Civil War.

To top it all off, it ended well. What more could you ask for.

No doubt that producers saw a series of these Mickey Matson films and another was made and another may be planned if there's public demand for same. But the McGuffin of this film, an alchemy machine is really a bit much. Only the littlest kids are going to swallow this one.

Young Derek Brandon is an appealing young title character who lives in a really rural part of Michigan and as it opens we discover he's at the funeral of his grandfather Christopher Lloyd. Lloyd left him a rock which turns out to be the key to treasure. An unlimited treasure as it turns out because there was something to those medieval and ancient tales of alchemy where base matter can be turned into precious metal.

There's also a secret society of people named after northern sympathizers to the Confederate cause, the Copperheads. They want that alchemy thing. Just think of the havoc it would reek on the economy of those damn Yankees.

Brandon as I said is appealing as is his female sidekick Francesca DeRosa who is visiting her grandmother Patrika Darbo. But the story was just way too outrageous. For the little kids only.

This was one of the worst movies I have ever seen; and trust me, I have seen a lot of dumb ones.

The script sounds like it was written for Axe Cop (but not designed to be commical), and aside from the 15 seconds that Christopher Lloyed graced the screen, the acting was terrible. The characters do stupid things for no logical reason and the filming is slow. The only strong point that this movie has is that after you have seen it, you can later make fun of it with your friends and family, always remembering it as the worst movie you guys have ever seen. If you don't plan on watching this movie with your friends or family, then you are better of spending your evening reading random wikipedia articles.

Who finances this drivel and calls it a movie? I wonder how many scripts actually fall through just because they were worse than this utter mess. It's a bad wannabe of all the great kids movies that have come before it. The acting on the part of the lead boy and girl was so stunted it felt unnatural. The dialog was high-school level literature and the script was awful with nothing to save the movie.

Great for a good laugh if you want to burn away an hour and half of your life. Yes this movie has good morals. most family movies do, so this isn't winning anything for that trait. No swearing or gore, it is for general audience, after all. But this movie was beyond cheesy and so corny it was painful to watch.

Save your time and your money and don't pay heed to the "rave" reviews.