Mysterious Island

March 1865. A group of Union soldiers escape from Confederate hands in a balloon, accompanied by their former Confederate captor. The balloon crashes on a sinister island, complete with strange malevolent creatures, pirates...and people from the year 2012.

Ostensibly based on Jules Verne's classic novel but, if it is, it must be very loosely based, as there is no way Jules Verne wrote even 5% of this crap. (Unfortunately, I haven't read Verne's novel, so can't comment with any authority on how closely this movie does follow the book). Bad in every way: plot, dialogue, acting. Even the historical references are inaccurate!

Monumentally cringeworthy. Avoid like the plague.

I said recently that I considered the 2005 Patrick Stewart adaptation of Mysterious Island to be the worst Jules Verne adaptation and I'd like to firmly retract that statement.

This version starring Lochlyn Munro and Gina Holden is an absolute abomination for a couple of reasons. For a start it's because it's simply bad, it's ugly, it's unoriginal, for the most part it's laughably written and acted and a film you'll have forgotten within mere moments of the credits rolling.

The second reason is the worst, this is supposed to be an adaptation of Jules Verne's classic! Now other adaptations have gone on tangents, featured characters and oversized monsters that weren't in the original novel but this version takes that to a whole new level. In no way shape or form is this Mysterious Island! Here we have portals, we have time travel, we have an entirely new background story for Nemo and instead of giant monsters we have Morlock looking antagonists! I don't know what they were thinking here but it's 5% Verne's work and 95% original and moronic.

It's films like this that underline my issue with senseless remakes, if you aren't going to respect the source material then why even call it an adaptation?

A regular on the Scyfy channel this is one to not only not watch but actively avoid especially if you enjoy Verne's works.

The Good:

Gina Holden

The Bad:

Some of the alterations from the source material are beyond moronic

Stock sound effects

Cringe inducing script

Mark Sheppard is wasted

I had some expectation why I wanted to watch this film. I had no information about it, except a line that this film is based on J. Verne's book. It started like a normal remake but turned to a surreal vision of a hurt brain about something. After ten minutes it was obvious that the original story and author has only a very loose connection to this film. The story does not worth more. The actors are forming unrealistic characters. It seems that they did their job only for the money without any efforts to play characters -if there is any at all. The director seems not to have minimal assumption about the story had to be filmed. In summary: Primitive story, no connection to the original book. The creators have stolen only a couple of names from J. Verne. Category "Z" actors, but is true that their level of play is comparable with the whole film. It is very difficult to understand who was able to give money for this. Waste of time even a minute. One star what I gave is exactly one star more than it worth, but there is no option for zero.

I saw Mysterious Island as I love the story and have a soft spot for the 1961 film. I was dubious as it was SyFy, whose standard of movies generally are nothing to write home about, however even for SyFy Mysterious Island is an abomination. Other commentators have said that it is very loosely based on the book, and they are right. I wasn't expecting much different on that angle, because from their adaptations of Earthsea and Journey to the Center of the Earth I knew that the only resemblance to the original story was going to be either the title or the characters' names. The problem is that Mysterious Island doesn't just fall down as an adaptation, it falls down on its own merits as well. The story here is very dully paced, and due to lack of any real tension or thrills it is very uninteresting as well. The characters are not as interesting either, a lot of them are clichéd and not much is done to develop them. Even Nemo's back-story is rushed and convoluted, almost as if done in reference. The dialogue is often corny with SyFy, but not in a while have I heard dialogue that was so unbearably so that you have a hard time taking anything seriously. The acting is poor, with a stiff uncharismatic Lochlyn Munro, a pretty but vapid Gina Holden and an all too brief Pruitt Taylor Vince. The production values I have no better news I'm afraid. Not much is done to make them authentic with the furs sometimes looking as though they were actually made of straw, also further undermined by the sights of modern technology like air vents when the mansion was built on an island supposedly without electricity. The special effects are laughable, with the octopus belonging more at home in a cheap video game and the shaggy creatures were as scary as someone dressing up for a Halloween party. All in all, terrible. 1/10 Bethany Cox

The island is mysterious. I'll give the movie credit for that, at least. And the mysteriousness of the island does manage to carry this for a while. The basic problem that I had with this, though, was that after a while I simply found myself not caring. The characters weren't at all sympathetic. None of them were sufficiently developed to really make me care about their fate, which is a big problem in a movie like this, since most of the story revolves around what's happening to the castaways.

The movie is obviously based on the Jules Verne story of the same name in which a group of Union soldiers steal a giant Confederate balloon in order to escape from Richmond near the end of the Civil War and get carried by the winds to the island. Obviously it's based very loosely on that story. I have only vague memories of the Verne story, but what I recall tells me that while the very basic outline is here, much of the original story is either left out or changed in this. And obviously, Verne having written the story in 1875, the addition of the Bermuda Triangle plot, and the crash of the airplane aren't from the Verne story at all, the former simply lending a paranormal feel to this, the latter being little more than an excuse to introduce two attractive young women to the group of castaways. The ending left me a bit dry and it left everything up in the air, whereas the Verne story had a much more definite ending.

For a while this is fine. It just falters mainly on the sense of indifference I had to the characters. If you don't care about the characters, you really don't care about the story. (4/10)