20.000 Léguas Submarinas

The only reason I looked this up on IMDb was to verify the year was correct. I understand it was made for TV, but it looks for all the world as if it had been made in the 50s or 60s. The music, the cinematography, the scenes. The way the camera pans in on the actress's face and all of a sudden her skin is dewy and translucent, as she stares with a damsel-in-distress expression, for just one example. This is done repeatedly. I truly thought the date listed on my television was an error. The show itself was OK. Most of the acting wasn't magnificent, but they weren't given much to work with either. I have never seen any other version of 20,000 Leagues nor have a I read the book, so this did get me interested enough to follow through with other versions. My husband and I agreed that this was a decent show for its time, until we realized it was made in 1997!

When I saw that this film was going to be shown on Channel 5 one afternoon, my first thought was why have I heard of this version before and where? I have to admit that the only reason I watched this film was to see Paul Gross as Ned Land. That is a reason to watch this film alone. It is not supposed to be believable but it was doing quite well until the giant seafish appeared and from then it went slightly downhill. Ben Cross as Captain Nemo is a wonderful baddie although you are left with the question is he that bad?

Richard Crenna is the only name I recognized in this cast and it is fitting because he gives the only credible acting performance. The film is too preoccupied with the good looks of both the young harpooner and the young female stowaway who is posing as a boy. She doesn't remotely look like a boy. Mr. McGoo without his glasses would say, ‘by George, why is that girl making a fool of herself pretending to be a boy?' On top of that she is a bad actress with an ugly nose. This version of the great Jules Verne novel takes liberties with the masterpiece. We are informed that it is `based on' the novel by the same title. Those two dreadful words; based on. And the clown who plays Captain Nemo does no justice to that fabulous character. When he made his grand entrance I was down on him before he even opened his mouth for his first line. His is a rigid, laughably solemn and overplayed part.

Crenna is 20,000 leagues a better actor than the others and the book and the ‘54 movie are each 20,000 leagues superior to this production.

Luckily the story is good enough that even a bad version of it is tolerable. Its not a groaner, but its junior high lame and shouldn't be.

After what seems like an age of prologue material, "Prof. Aronnax" (Richard Crenna) and his daughter "Sophie" (Julie Cox) finally set sail on the USS "Abraham Lincoln" under the command of "Capt. Farragut" (Jeff Harding) in search of a sea monster that has been marauding the South Seas terrorising the shipping. Luckily they have harpoon man "Ned Land" (Paul Gross) on board, so catching and killing this beast ought to be a synch. Well, the animal duly arrives and next thing, the threesome find themselves guests of the enigmatic "Capt. Nemo" (Ben Cross) who has a serious axe to grind with those on the surface. This smacks of a pilot episode to a television series. It takes far too long with character establishment then relies almost entirely on the underwater visual effects to tell a story that is really bereft of decent acting and writing skills. Jules Verne wrote a great story that offers loads to a film-maker, but Michael Anderson seems content to leave us with this lacklustre sequence of pretty predictable, lame even, adventures and there is even room for a little love triangle between the captain, the harpoonist and the daughter (who reminded me of Sheena Easton) who is fed up having to compromise as a woman in a man's world. Nothing at all memorable here, Cross is shockingly wooden and if this is the story for you, then the 1954 Disney version and the 1916 silent ones are far, far better.

A beautifully mounted version of Jules Verne's classic. Unlike the Disney version of the fifties this one offers an understanding of Nemo's reasons for his actions. The photography was masterful and the music was sublime. Richard Crenna once again rises to the occasion and Ben Cross is outstanding as the master of the Nautilus. Julie Cox had not yet quite developed the excellence of performance that she would later with Children of Dune, but still brought much to her role as Sophie. It is true that there were a few weak spots in the storyline, but nothing that could deserve the negative reviews that I have read here. This Nemo was always true to who he set out to be, unlike James Mason's Nemo who too shallow. All in all a visual splendor.