L'île mystérieuse

Knowing that several of the actors in this movie have turned in remarkable roles in other films and television shows, I have come to suspect that the massive performance deficiencies displayed in this film are the result of what appears to be nonexistent direction. When I look at the performances given here, I can only picture director Russell Mulcahy standing behind the camera giving the same direction that Bob MacKenzie (Rick Moranis) was given by his brother Doug in Strange Brew ("PSST!! Act! Act!!").

I am familiar with a good portion of the work of Jules Verne, as well as the astonishing and disappointing creative liberties that are so often taken with his work (it still blows my mind completely that they added a DUCK to the 1959 adaptation of Journey to the Center of the Earth), but I have not read Mysterious Island so I don't know how faithful the film is to the original story. In any case, there is not a single passable performance in the movie, the direction is completely witless, and the special effects are deplorable. A 15-year-old with an outdated copy of After Effects could do better than this.

Besides all that, I will be perfectly happy to live out the rest of my life and never again see a movie in which someone washes up onto a beach, sleeping soundly, and then coughs once or twice before getting up to go exploring. Are the giant insects not enough reason for suspension of disbelief? And don't even get me started on the pirates, my god what a joke. First of all, not only do our heroes react with hostility and violence when they finally encounter other normal human beings of the non-gigantic-man-eating-insect variety on the island, but after inviting them over to their humble Robinson Crusoe home, complete with dinner table, place settings for ten, goblets, eating utensils, candles, and the like, but once convinced of the defected pirates' trustworthiness, they give one of them - a caveman looking sort from years surviving on the island – a total celebrity makeover, shave, haircut, gel, new clothes, etc. I guess they forgot that they are surviving, too.

The worst thing that the movie does, besides the deplorable performances and ridiculous screenplay (I can even forgive awful direction as long as the effort is there), is that it tries to create dramatic and intense situations when there is no reason for it. The captain jumps maybe 15 feet into the water to lighten the load on the hot air balloon, and everyone freaks out as though he jumped out of a plane. Other humans are greeted with suspicion as though anyone has any reason to be afraid for their lives. At one point, the eagle-eyed Neb, played by Omar Gooding, uses a telescope to spot a massive, four-masted pirate ship maybe a hundred yards off shore. He calls to the captain and explains that he has spotted a pirate ship and hands him the telescope, somehow intuitively knowing that the captain will not be able to see Old Ironsides blotting out the horizon without it.

I'll go right ahead and admit that I had extremely low expectations for the show, it's made-for-TV, first of all, and I've yet to see a single competently made Jules Verne film adaptation, but I've seen better acting in an elementary school drama class, and the script could not possibly be dumber. Who thought it would be a good idea to have the good guys sneak up on the pirate ship behind a floating log, for God's sake?? Come on guys, let's just swim right out to the ship, no one will notice!

Wow. Miss this one.

Look, I grew up watching Pertwee and Baker's Dr Who and can enjoy them still today, so for me, these FX look pretty darn special!

The only thing letting this one down really is the pantomime style performance of Vinnie Jones as the head pirate and story's principal antagonist. Although by now he had got a lot of acting experience under his belt, seems just a little too self-conscious in the role to have the confidence to attack it with balls-out hutzpah - this is a part where you really need to go big, or go home!

Kyle MacLachlan and Patrick Stewart are uniformly strong in anything they do and both score well here. It was also a joy to see Roy Marsden revelling in the escapist hijinks here, as his face was so often on TV when I was growing up and he's not used as often as his talent deserves these days.

If you embrace the silliness and laugh at the cheesier moments, without trying to compare it to Jules Verne's book there's much to enjoy here!

This new adaptation from Jules Verne novel starts on American Civil War , after the battle of Richmond . An Union POWs , an official named Cyrus (Kyle McLachlan) , Pencroff (Jason Durr) , an African-American soldier (Omar Gooding) , a mother (Gabrielle Anwar) and her daughter (Calvert) escape in an observation balloon and terminate stranded on a lonely South Pacific island . They must use their talents to survive dangers , facing off pirates (Vinnie Jones) and devise a way to return home . At the uncharted island find gigantic bugs and huge animals , such as large serpents , giant spiders , monstrous dragonfly , enormous rat , among them . Of course , they also encounter captain Nemo (Patrick Stewart) and his loyal helper Joseph (Roy Marsden) and his riveting submarine of the future called Nautilus . Furthermore , an unstable volcano on the edge of eruption .

This follow-up to ¨20.000 leagues under the sea¨ is an exciting fantasy-adventure full of special effects created by means of computer-generator . The runtime is overlong with several incidents and sub-plots , taking too much liberties from original novel . The cast is great but wasted , as weak performance by Patrick Stewart , unforgettable Star Trek's Piccard . Brilliant and shimmer cinematography , being filmed on location in an island of Thailand . The motion picture was middlingly directed by Russel Mulcahy.

Other versions based on this classic story are the following ones and filmed before : 1) Silent rendition made in 1929 , 2) Mysterious island directed by Cy Endfield (1961) , and starred by Michael Craig , Joan Greenwood and Herbert Lom as Nemo , with creatures designed by the master Ray Harryhausen , it's the best adaptation , and 3) European take on Mysterious island (1973) made by Juan Antonio Bardem with Omar Shariff as captain Nemo , Rik Battaglia , Gerard Tichy , among others.

This movie started out reasonably well, and it had a excellent cast.It is very well acted by the leads but all the pirates should have their actors guilds cards taken from them.

The story is a classic, even when very artistic license is taken as in this production.

So it had two positive points, the cast and the J.Verne story line.

Sadly it is all down hill from there. I am taking into account that this is made for TV, but even so, the pirates were a joke and absolutely cartoon like. The special effects removed you out of the movie every time you started to get involved in it.They were pathetic.

If this movie was an hour long I might suggest you sit through it, but at 170 min, it was not a fun experience. I wanted to like this, and really the actors did pretty good, but I just can not recommend it.

This is indeed an awful production, and it has nothing to do with Verne.

The five castaways in Verne's book are Cyrus Smith (the brilliant military engineer--who for some reason or other is called Cyrus Harding in most of the English-language versions), Gideon Spillett (the newspaper reporter), Neb (ex-slave still working for ex-owner Smith, who freed him), Pencroff (a sailor), and Harbert (youngster, son of Pencroff's late captain, for whom Pencroff is acting as guardian). Verne is very good at sketching these guys' personalities and making them come alive for us, and all his careful nuancing is thrown out the window in this production.

Why these female characters? The novel has NO female characters, and it assumes five men can live on a deserted island for three years and never think about women or sex---the subject never comes up. If the producers didn't think that believable, they should have written their own damn story and not pretended to be dramatizing Verne's.

Yes, Captain Nemo does appear in the novel, but he's absolutely nothing like he is in this production.

There's a reformed pirate named Ayrton in the book, but other than that he has nothing in common with the reformed pirate Blake in this version.

My respect for Stewart is a lot less after knowing that he would consent to be in this ridiculous production.