the Mind’s Chew Toy

The winter months are a great time to be a DVD owner - especially just before Christmas. All of the summer blockbusters are making a beeline to get to DVD and special editions of old favorites start popping up left and right - all hoping to vie for a spot under consumers’ trees 6 days from now.

Why, in the past 19 days alone, we’ve seen the arrival to DVD of summer hits Bad Boys II (2003), Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl (2003), and now The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen…not to mention special editions of Dirty Dancing, Escape From New York, the Alien films, To Live and Die in LA, Basic Instinct (1992) and On Golden Pond!

So, with this slew of films showing up near you, would The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen be good enough to rise above the thickening masses, or would it be just another bad Christmas gift?

Sean Connery brings his massive star power to LXG…and doesn’t seem to do much with it. He seems to be just going through the motions. Maybe he’s just getting old, and is starting to think he should retire, or maybe he was just a bit out of his league in this action film. Whatever the case may be, he seems to stumble through the film, a disturbing change from his regular strong, somewhat egotistical, on-screen presence the audience has come to know over the years.

In LXG, Connery reminds one a little bit of a favorite doddering old uncle: he’s still trying hard and we are too kind-hearted to tell him to stop, but he should just the same. Hopefully, this is just a small pit stop in his career, and he will shine again in his next film. Hopefully.

The rest of the cast try to make up for Connery’s lack of enthusiasm, but still try to keep old Sean tagging along, so they fail somewhat in that regard. It could be that they are being stifled by old Sean, or it could be that this is the best they can do. Either way, the movie suffers.

The possible exceptions to this could be Townsend and West, who both do have shining points during the film, but these points die down rather quickly, leaving the movie to be lead by another character - the special effects.

After seeing Hulk recently, and how far CGI has come with creating lifelike human-like creatures, it’s not a surprise that LXG decided to go with the real-life approach of prosthetics and make-up effects instead when creating their “Hulk” - Mr. Hyde.

Unfortunately, if this movie is any indication, the real thing doesn’t really do much better in envisioning these fantastical creatures. It does have it’s positives, just as CGI does, but both come out looking just fake enough to be noticeable.

The true highlights of the film come from two inanimate objects - the “Nemomobile” and the Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s car and famed submarine, respectively. The Nemomobile and the Nautilus are both put through their paces in this film, and come off looking truly amazing. True, a couple of scenes of the Nautilus are a little too hokey to be taken as reality, but all in all, the car and the sub come through the film with less tarnish to their names than any of the people who were acting in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

The plot, which took famed legendary characters and tossed them together in an unlikely scenario, definitely gets points for originality, but fails to follow through on what could have happened with such an impressive team of characters. It doesn’t really give any of the characters, with the exception of Quatermain, a real chance to be more than just secondary characters, and doesn’t flesh out their unique assets to the team enough.

Sure, we know, for example, that Mina is a vampiress - but let’s see a little more of what she can do! Or how about Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde? Rather than just scratching the surface, and given us shots of a confused and tired Dr. Jekyll, clue is in on the emotional struggle he’s going through each and every day? Or how about Tom Sawyer? I didn’t catch that name until the credits - why not give a bit more info on that guy? Or Skinner? Or Dorian Gray?

Rather than having the characters sum themselves up in one sentence (literally), how about giving us a bit more in-depth look at them? If they had done that, the viewer would have gotten deeper involved in the characters, and been more inclined to be interested in the events that happen after that.

All in all, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen turns out to be an original idea taken nowhere. With Sean Connery limping through his scenes with great difficulty, and no other character given the chance to fill the void left by him, not to mention only okay special effects for the most part (with the exception of the Nautilus and the Nemomobile), this legendary collection of heroes won’t go very far in impressing anyone.

It’s unfortunate, and leaves one with a bit of dread that this may be the future of the new Van Helsing (2004) - which has promised the return of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman. Let’s hope not.

For now, though, let’s just say this: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is incorrect - maybe The League of Gentlemen might work a little better - because there definitely isn’t anything Extraordinary about this film.