Mysterious Island (2005)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Good movie but grossly overrated

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

As Good As It Gets

I could list all the reasons why this movie fails but honestly just watch the the trailer and you'l get a good idea of how bad this movie is. I actually enjoyed this movie when I saw it a couple of years ago but in the same way I enjoy 'the Room' and 'Cool cat saves the kids'. this movie is laughably bad particularly the scenes with the pirates, so unless your with a bunch of friends who enjoy watching bad movies than I wouldn't recommended this movie. Honestly the only reason why i'm bothering to review this mess of a movie is to complete my profile checklist.this is the kind of movie that gets given out for free with the Mail on Sunday.(that's a newspaper in England.) In fact that's actually where I found this movie so I think that tells you all you need to know. I'm going to end this review now and never think about this pirate,giant rat,praying mantis,Patrick Stewart,Volcano themed monstrosity ever again.

I think that if you didn't read the book by Verne, you'll still think this movie is 'a fun ride'. Although not very credible it's an adventurous movie that will probably appeal to many kids. It has nice landscapes and caves, it has Kyle MacLachlan, which is always good, and Patrick Stewart. It kind of looks like they sent them on a free holiday on the condition that they would show their faces to the cameras once in a while. I realise this is probably a very mild review still. And this is probably due to the fact that I'd seen Riverworld right before I watched this movie and, trust me, Riverworld was so much worse! At least, in this movie, I cared 'a bit' about 'some characters', the story 'kind of' made sense and at least had a classic beginning, middle and ending. But I hated it when Blake died. He gets a second chance and he dies in a couple of seconds in a very meaningless way. And Cyrus is like: "Leave him. He's dead." I still thought for a while he was going to come back... When Cyrus tells his love interest (what's her name anyway) that he let a little boy die during the war this scene only seems to lead to a kiss, while I would have made it more meaningful if I had had any say over the script, e.g. by making him return for Blake to save him, making up for his past mistake in a way. But now, they might as well have cut the scene. It had no (important) function. So this movie lacked a decent pay-off to begin with.I wonder whether Kyle MacLachlan's character looks so cold because the actor didn't care much about his part. This is an actor who can radiate so much warmth and passion just by watching something or someone and here he plays a character that appears to be more robot than human being, like they actually programmed his traumatising past into his brain. And I always wonder why they call movies under 5 or 6 hours miniseries. It's just a (too) long movie if you ask me. There is absolutely no need for a 'to be continued' in this movie, perhaps on television due to all the commercial breaks but not on a DVD. Two end credits are just annoying. And I do have to say this movie has insultingly bad CGI, especially for its time! I bet a toddler could draw up better spiders on a magna doodle. I'm arachnophobic and I shrugged when I saw those spiders. You could see the budget decrease reflect on the CGI. Every minute the creatures in this movie had less texture eventually looking like early storyboard prototypes. Also, hey clearly 'glued' Patrick Stewart on the screen whenever he was outside his house. And, oh, that bird was awful! Also, the costumes looked like they went shopping in H&M and came up with some clothes that - with some imagination - had something slightly in common with what people wore around that time. I haven't read the book but it's on my reading list now. I agree with the guy saying they shouldn't have added female characters to the story. Seriously, a woman can handle a movie with not a single (or few) female characters. There is this little something called imagination, you know. Playing a male character in an RPG as a woman can be really fun and it's all about relating to the 'human' aspect, right? I think it's more important to stay loyal to the characters from the book than to satisfy a couple of feminists. I enjoyed 300 very much and I would have been insulted if they had forced female characters into the battle scenes as that wouldn't even have made historical sense. It's different when there already is a strong female character present in the original source, like Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Actually, adding these boring female characters who don't really add anything to the story (except for being the obvious mannequin displaying 'the evil amulet' and being the subject of a more important character's love) is more insulting than leaving them out.So this movie is okay if you just want to see something light and adventurous during which you'll be able to talk without someone shushing you and if you're not a real Verne fan. But you will be bothered by the script from time to time and you WILL notice the ridiculous CGI. (Oh my God, HOW fake was that smoke coming out of the volcano!!!) If you think that's cute and charming and that doesn't annoy you, you'll probably enjoy it. If you want to see something deep and meaningful that makes you ponder upon themes and characters for another week afterwards, please pick something else.

I know this was pretty meh, yet I couldn't help but enjoy it. Part one is definitely the more enjoyable of the two, while part two is just bad.I hadn't read or seen Mysterious Island previous to this so I can't comment on how faithful it is. My guess would be: not very.The direction is lame, the editing is lacking and the acting is sub-par. At times, it was enjoyable. The props, set-design and location were a nice touch but the CGI - oh my God! Terrible! The over-sized-insects looking bad I could take...but the CGI-heavy ending is AWFUL! I want to tell you to avoid it but...it appealed to me because sometimes I like action to be cheesy, stupid and unintentionally funny. If you do too, watch it. If not, stay far away says I. 6/10 P.S. I didn't even recognise Vinnie Jones. I don't know what to say to that. I guess it's a compliment...

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.