30,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Well, don't expect anything near the previous versions of Jules Verne adventure. Aside from the title and the recycling of names, this "updated" story is a total disappointment. Contrived story line, horrible dialog, horrible plot, and even worse acting. This is a dog fish if ever there was one. Real shame too, they could have done so much more with this premise if they'd only tried. It's like a really bad Deep Space Nine episode, only torturous drawn out and pointless. I gave it 3 stars out of pity. Don't waste your time with this one. The best description of this would be Dr. Strangelove meets Jaques Coustou, only without any of the humor or cinematography of either.

So, another movie from the infamous Asylum. A film studio who pound out these "Mockbuster" movies that are low budget rip offs of big Hollywood titles and release them at the same time to cash in on their popularity.

For example

The Day the Earth Stood Still > The Day the Earth Stopped Pacific Rim > Atlantic Rim Aliens vs Predator > Aliens vs Hunter Snakes on a Plane > Snakes on a Train High School Musical > Sunday School Musical

You get the idea. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact they're so incredibly dire!

I'm sure I don't need to say what 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a "Mockbuster" of but rest assured it doesn't use much of the material. A couple of character names (One they fail to pronounce correctly) and the Nautilus and that's as far as it goes. The entire movie is an embarrassingly bad entirely original story that has nothing to do with Jules Verne's classic works.

I've been binge watching every adaptation and this is the last one, what a way to end it on an absolute bottom of the barrel low.

It looks terrible, the cast are pitiful and this actually manages to be bad even for an Asylum feature. Bad, bad, bad.

The Good:

I like the bit where it ended

The Bad:

Expectedly poorly made

Some embarrassingly bad sound balancing in places

In no way is it based on Vernes work

Dreadfully paced

Cast are less than competent

Quite possibly the worst film I've ever seen. Made me laugh though, for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to invoice the the cinema for letting me watch it! Continuity was all over the place. I failed to understand how some of the characters got hurt or appeared and disappeared, maybe I fell asleep though. If I was one of the actors, I'd have given my fee back and asked for the masters so I could have those sink to the bottom of the ocean too.

Will these guys work again? Should we create a '30,000 Leagues Actors Charity'? Who will support their families?

I gave them a score of one as I couldn't select zero. Shame for Jules though, he must be turning in his grave. Some excrement floats, some excrement sinks, this sank right to the bottom.

We already knew that Lorenzo Lamas was a bad actor and not very bright considering the fact that he broke up with a fox like Shawna Sands but he had to go and confirm his stupidity by taking part in this film. It was horrible! Bad acting, bad effects, bad dialog and way too much face time for Lamas. This film had generally no redeeming qualities whatsoever. In addition, the film strayed so far from the original Captain Nemo storyline that they might as well have left out the Jules Verne reference altogether. Hollywood had a genuine opportunity to make something entertaining and redeeming in this age of environmental awareness and once again, dropped the ball.

Execrable acting, directing, editing, dialogue. Others have already covered that.

Also, in the first 10 minutes I counted 4 blatant science errors... When a submarine captain said "It can't be a fish, there's nothing but plankton this far down," I knew this was a real stinker. (The truth is the reverse, there are big animals but *not* plankton in the deep.)

It costs millions of dollars to produce a project like this, even with the pitiful special effects and no-name talent. Can't they at least invest a couple hundred dollars to hire a science fiction writer to do a little fact-checking? I'm available!

jpf