Tarzan et la cité perdue

Jeez, this is a hard bunch to satisfy. As my screen name indicates I am a stone cold Edgar Rice Burroughs freak and, for ERB fans, Tarzan flicks are less to be enjoyed than to be endured. Our suffering has been great and it has been long. When you have paid hard wampum to sit through "At The Earth's Core"....when you have an actual opinion as to whether Buster Crabbe was a better actor than Johnny Weissmuller....when you can explain the difference between Nyoka, Sheena and Rulah....then you can tell us what a lousy Tarzan movie this is.

For those Happy Few who fit the description above, you are going to like this film just fine and, in fact, you have probably already seen it. It's not the real McCoy, but you've doubtless given up on that by now.

As a big Tarzan fan, of both the books and the movies, I gotta say watching this as a kid on VHS was disappointing. I only watched it again many years later because I just happened to stumble onto it while curiously skimming over Casper Van Dien's filmography and decided to make this review.

In 1913, John Clayton aka Tarzan (Casper Van Dien) is preparing to marry Jane Porter (Jane March) in England. But suddenly, he receives a vision sent by a shaman named Mugambe (Winston Ntshona), informing him that explorer and treasure hunter Nigel Ravens (Stephen Waddington) is plundering African villages in search of the lost city of Opar. Now, Tarzan must return to Africa to stop Ravens while Jane follows him to assist on his adventure.

First of all, the story is pretty humdrum and shows little faithfulness to the source literary material. For example, the origin of Tarzans name came from his tribe of apes, not the natives. Jane is American, not British. And Opar is portrayed almost completely differently as a gigantic pyramid instead of an actual city. And finally, with the uncharacteristic supernatural elements, it felt like director Carl Schenkel was going for an Indiana Jones styled adventure, but it all went wrong.

Everyone was miscast here. Casper Van Dien proved he was worth his salt in Starship Troopers and might have made an acceptable Tarzan with his build, but he was no Johnny Weissmuller or Christopher Lambert. His awful fake British accent didn't help. Jane March isn't even trying as she apathetically mutters her lines and is a run-of-the-mill damsel in distress who mostly just complicates things for Tarzan. Finally, Steven Waddington just isn't tough or intimidating enough as a villain to impress the intended child audience, let alone challenge the King of the Apes.

The special effects were very poor and spoke volumes of the films modest $20 million budget; its quality looked similar to the more enjoyable TV series "Tarzan: The Epic Adventures" from 1996-1997. We see badly made slow-motion effects and choppy camera work everywhere. Tarzan's ape friends were men wearing ridiculously fake looking suits and Mugumbe's CGI Cobra form is very cheesy, even for 1998. And, finally, due to the PG rating and a desire to make this a kid's film, the action scenes aren't that exciting or impressive. Almost everything in this film felt stale.

There were some redeeming qualities though. I loved the beautiful landscape of South Africa where filming took place, from the lush jungles to the savannah fields. The porters in Ravens expedition sang a pretty catchy song while crossing a field, and the soundtrack composed by Christopher Franke had some decent pieces here and there. The massive pyramid of Opar itself, which was made with practical effects, looked fairly impressive. Finally, there was some pretty nice footage of real animals to counter the fake gorillas, including a Chimp named Jebba.

In the end, this was a bold but failed attempt to create a modern Tarzan in the 90's that didn't do Casper Van Dien's career any favors, and there wouldn't even be another live action Tarzan flick until 2016. So don't watch this unless you're either bored or a massive fan.

Tarzan and the Lost City was a failed attempt to bring the Lord of the Apes into the 90s. Caspar Van Dien was physically imposing as John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, and his loincloth-clothed alter ego, but he is just not a good enough actor to bring Burroughs' real character to the screen. The special effects were well made, but trite and really not needed, and the villains were never a good match for Tarzan, a man physically capable of doing just about anything. Jane March is attractive, but in a more British sort of way, which really doesn't translate well to American movie-going audiences.

Since there was so much comment on the "fake gorillas," I think it is worth pointing out that these were not in fact intended to be gorillas but rather the fictional race of "great apes" that raised Tarzan in the Burroughs novels. They were supposed to be something closer to humans, with a language developed enough that it could be translated into English - in fact Tarzan was a word in the great ape language meaning "white skin." You can quibble about how successful the movie portrayal of these creatures was, but any Burroughs fan will recognize what they were trying to do. In any case, it was a brief sequence.

I thought this movie was surprisingly good and came closer to capturing the flavor of Burroughs' later Tarzan novels than anything else I have seen. Burroughs, after all, was primarily a fantasy writer and there is no point in holding his fiction to any "realistic" standard. The production standards were quite good and I liked the principal actors. In fact, Van Dien may be my second favorite Tarzan, after Gordon Scott.

I enjoyed this film. It was nice to jump PAST the point where Tarzan was discovered, to a point where he had left the jungle and returned to England for socialization. Casper is an intelligent, grunt-free version of Tarzan who returns to the jungle after getting a psychic call "home" from his shaman friend. The movie remained focused on the goal set at the beginning, to save the Lost City from a power hungry treasure hunter. I didn't feel lost or that any of the events were fluff. There is a nice display of magic which was presented well by the special effects team. All of the acting was well done and not overdramatized. I would very much like to see the story continued by this team of creators and actors.