Verne would be as furious as I am if he had to watch this schlock

tom_amity

This is indeed an awful production, and it has nothing to do with Verne.

The five castaways in Verne's book are Cyrus Smith (the brilliant military engineer--who for some reason or other is called Cyrus Harding in most of the English-language versions), Gideon Spillett (the newspaper reporter), Neb (ex-slave still working for ex-owner Smith, who freed him), Pencroff (a sailor), and Harbert (youngster, son of Pencroff's late captain, for whom Pencroff is acting as guardian). Verne is very good at sketching these guys' personalities and making them come alive for us, and all his careful nuancing is thrown out the window in this production.

Why these female characters? The novel has NO female characters, and it assumes five men can live on a deserted island for three years and never think about women or sex---the subject never comes up. If the producers didn't think that believable, they should have written their own damn story and not pretended to be dramatizing Verne's.

Yes, Captain Nemo does appear in the novel, but he's absolutely nothing like he is in this production.

There's a reformed pirate named Ayrton in the book, but other than that he has nothing in common with the reformed pirate Blake in this version.

My respect for Stewart is a lot less after knowing that he would consent to be in this ridiculous production.

score /10

tom_amity 1 November 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1207077/