The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Scott Manning July 13, 2003

Director: Stephen Norrington
Release Date: July 11th, 2003
Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of fantasy violence, and language
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The year is 1899. Some unknown villain is terrorizing countries throughout Europe trying to spark a world war. Once the war is started, the villain will profit by selling a new breed of weapons to the different countries including tanks, metal body armor, and machine guns. Luckily, there is a group called The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ready to put a stop to the whole thing.

The League is made up of characters from famous novels written during the 1800's. These characters include Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery), Captain Nemo, Dorian Gray, Dr. Jekyll, an invisible man, and more. This League was put together to stop such threats.

I haven't heard of a concept this unique and interesting in a long time. Too bad the makers of the movie screwed the whole thing up.

Agonizing and messy
I can think of no better words to describe this movie than "agonizing" and "messy". It was agonizing to sit through it and it is agonizing to write about it. The movie was all over the place without any continuity or flow. It's like a bunch pre-filmed actions scenes thrown together for lame reasons that only insult the viewer.

Hopefully, you will read this and heed my warning:

Believe me; you'll thank me in the morning.

This movie hardly had a coherent plot. The action scenes are fast and intense, but it was as though the makers said to each other, "Let's see, what's a good reason to throw in that car chase scene we already filmed?"

The characters end up in impossible situations and suddenly come with the craziest solutions without even knowing the problem. It's as though they all had copies of the script. But why should the viewer care? The characters are hardly given any time to develop in this movie at all. Each character had a least one classic book written about them. So if the makers needed material, it was available.

The computer animation was below standard and downright hideous at times. Although there are a few cool scenes and Captain Nemo's ship is impressive, the other scenes of the movie overwhelm everything else.

Some of the computer animation on the invisible man was intriguing, but it was never consistent. The invisible man would put makeup on his face so that his fellow gentlemen could see him. The makeup would only cover part of his head displaying a very cool effect that allows the viewer to only see the shapes of the man's head that are covered with makeup. Then at times, his head would suddenly be completely covered in one scene so that no special effects were needed and then in the next scene, we just couldn't see the invisible man. I guess he wiped his makeup off really quick or something.

My guess would be that they ran out of money, but how do you run out of 78 million dollars so quickly?

This was very irritating and went on throughout the whole movie.

Continuing with the lame effects, one of the nameless villains gets a hold of Dr. Jekyll's chemicals and drinks way to much. He mutates into this giant, red, monster with a hunchback. One might think he would look scary, but he really just looked retarded cartoon.

The slight bit of drama introduced in the movie simply came off as cheesy. Even Sean Connery's acting couldn't save this film. This movie is a messy, agonizing stinker of a film. I wonder what the actors thought at the premiere of this thing. Were they embarrassed? Because I sure would have been.

Save your money and see something else.

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