Susan Granger’s review of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (20th Century-Fox)
When a major studio, big-budget action-adventure is as dreary and dismal as this, it’s often interesting to dissect its various elements and discover what went wrong. Based on the graphic novel (i.e.: comic book) by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, the story assembles adventurer Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery), Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), “Invisible Man” Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran), Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde (Jason Flemyng), Tom Sawyer (Shane West), and Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), a Dracula-inspired vampire. It’s 1899 when they’re summoned by Britain’s Secret Agent M (Richard Roxburgh) to sail to Venice, Italy, to battle a powerful enemy known only as The Fantom. While these living legends have colorful reputations, they’re uniformly dull – with the notable exception of Quatermain, who struggles valiantly to turn the American lad into a surrogate son. Working from a clumsy, confusing, convoluted script by James Dale Robinson, director Stephen Norrington (“Blade”) seems totally at a loss with how to connect with the actors at his disposal. As a result, emotional relationships between the misfit characters are non-existent. And it’s impossible to suspect disbelief when the special effects are this silly. “The Invisible Man” is just an actor in white-face makeup and – even with a comic book mentality – one cannot conceive how the gigantic “Nautilus” submarine could skim undetected through the narrow Venetian canals, nor how everyone is able to drive cars. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” is a ponderous, inconsequential 3. Is it possible that the vision of producer Don Murphy (“From Hell”) was actually to dumb-down a comic book?
