L'île mystérieuse

Don't waste your time with this. If I had known that this was a made for TV movie, with fade outs for commercials, and a "to be continued" pause in the middle of the DVD, I would not have rented it. It was a waste of 2 hrs & 45 minutes of my time. I do believe that the special effects were supposed to be cheesy, as if to imitate the 1961 original film. If that was the case, they didn't even match up to that and that movie is 45 years old for crying out loud! But go rent the original. It was much better. Even Jason and the Argonaut movies hands down had 100 times better effects than this movie. Patrick Stewart, one of my favorite actors of today and the main reason that I rented it, was fair at best. You could tell that he was just walking through this role and suffering along with the rest of us. And he sure was not at all interested in vying for an Oscar or Emmy. Yikes!! Oh, and did I mention that this was a totally useless movie? Stay away......a galaxy far, far away!

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 A 15-year-old with an outdated copy of After Effects could do better than this.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.

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.

I've always been an admirer of Jules Verne's novels. But this movie was certainly poorly produced. This movie has a completely different storyline from Jules Vernes novel. Like Jules Verne's novel, the film tells the story of a group of prisoners who have escaped from a Confederate prisoner of war camp during the American Civil War by a hot air balloon. They travel over the pacific and their balloon is wrecked on an island in the south Pacific, an island which is filled with mysterious secrets.

While Captain Nemo did appear in the novel of 'Mysterious Island' he didn't appear in the novel until the third quarter of the novel, while in this movie he reveals himself close to the beginning. Also there were no female characters in the novel of 'Mysterious Island' while this includes film a woman who works as a nurse at the Confederate prisoner of war camp and her teenage daughter who are among the escapees in the balloon and stranded on the island. But I suppose it does give a bit of interest to the film. While there were certainly cutthroat pirates in the novel of 'Mysterious Island' I don't recall any giant animals.

The giant creatures were certainly very terrifying in this movie. There was a giant praying mantis, giant scorpions, giant ants, and even a giant bird. These creatures certainly presented a great suspense throughout the film, the computer generated affects didn't look realistic at all. Not much fun I don't think.

This film certainly needed a lot more to make it interesting. It needed a better cast of actors for one thing, but most of all this film needed a better story-line, the story in this film is extremely dull, it's not like the story in the novel at all. Overall the only good thing about this movie was Patrick Stewart, he is such a brilliant actor! In fact he was the only reason I kept watching the film. So I have to admit this 'Mysterious Island' movie is extremely dull, I don't recommend it to anyone.

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!