Review of Treasure Island

The casting is truly bizarre, especially Eddie Izzard and Elija Wood – presumably to sell it to the Americans. And don't start me on the Donald Sutherland as Flint (was that three or five seconds of footage…) The whole character of this wonderful book has been spoilt by the direction. The sets and historical detail are well done but everything else is just shoddy. Long John Silver is a truly great fictional character but Izzard's modernisation is just wretched. The acting is generally very poor.

There is more character, emotion and value in any one minute of any of the previous black and white versions of this movie than in the whole of this awful mess. Watch those old movies or better still, read the book.