Review

Review Date: 20-July-03
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Just OK

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is based upon an adult comic by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill which has a very cool premise: it brings together a group of literary characters from books published circa 1900 and throws them into an outlandish Victorian world where they overcome their individual weaknesses to form a powerful crime-fighting team. As you can imagine, the possibilities are endless in such a construct, so bringing it to theaters in a single, coherent movie is a huge undertaking. As with the "X-Men," the first cinematic attempt to introduce the League to a broad moviegoing audience doesn't quite get the job done. It succeeds in creating a visually arresting gothic fantasy world, but doesn't allow its characters or their adventures to flourish within it.

The truly extraordinary Sean Connery stars as Allan Quatermain (from H. Rider Haggard's series), an adventurer and big game hunter who, in 1899, is brought out of his African retirement to prevent a madman from starting a world war. Since he's the oldest tough guy around, Quatermain is put at the head of the mysterious League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a motley crew consisting of an ex-pirate, Captain Nemo (Jules Verne's hero); a sexy vampire, Mina Harker (who appeared in Bram Stoker's "Dracula"); the indestructible Dorian Gray (from Oscar Wilde); and Robert Louis Stevenson's dynamic duo of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. To draw the under-25 crowd, the screenwriters also added American icon Tom Sawyer, who has grown up to be a spy. Finally, the cast is rounded out by "an invisible man" named Skinner, who isn't the Invisible Man of H. G. Wells' tale, since the rights to that character are owned by a different movie studio. But in fantasy, you can get around such niceties.

Each member brings a distinctive strength to the team, as well as a certain degree of suspicion, mistrust, and emotional baggage. These factors come into play when they head out in Nemo's amazing ocean liner/submarine, the Nautilus, but since there are so many stories to deal with, none is overly complex or developed. Stuart Townsend and Peta Wilson spar as old flames Gray and Harker; Jason Flemyng looks constipated to depict the ongoing (and confusing) battle between Jekyll and Hyde; and Connery and Shane West act out a few banal scenes of father-son bonding between Quatermain and Sawyer (who lacks any unusual talent beyond being cute and floppy haired). They blow up a lot of buildings, shoot off a lot of guns, and travel to a few nifty locations, but never really do or feel anything that you can remember after the popcorn is digested.

However, while the characters and plotline are limp, the production design of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is exceptional. Perhaps because I'm an anachronistically spawned, repressed old Victorian myself, I loved the pompous grandeur of Quatermain's British men's club in Kenya, the libraries of suspicious agent M (Richard Roxburgh) and Dorian Gray, and the dark, cavernous hell holes of the villain's arctic fortress. Most splendid of all is the Nautilus, a seagoing Xanadu worthy of the big screen, whose refinement makes the Titanic look like a garbage scow. The special effects are respectable as well, particularly a battle between Mr. Hyde (who greatly resembles The Hulk, only without the green) and a mammoth corruption of Mr. Hyde, who is actually so grotesque as to be frightening.

"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is a textbook summer matinee: big and loud and full of fantastical images. Unlike other recent comic book adaptations, this movie made me want to go out and read the original source(s), hinting as it did at dangerous adventures and mysterious alleyways left unexplored. The movie can be faulted for being a tad dull and uninspired, but it clearly represents an honest effort to spin a good yarn, and some of its elements succeed. Only time will tell whether, like "X-Men," it has laid the groundwork for a sequel to move beyond the introductions and into the deeper, richer experiences of its unlikely champions.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.