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Chris451
Reviews
1313: Haunted Frat (2011)
Naked Tedium
Even for a David DeCoteau film, this thing is remarkably boring and repetitive. Frat boys wander around, shower, exercise, wrestle, always with their shirts off, usually in their underwear. It's a horror film (I suppose) without a a single scary moment, no violence, no tension. And here's the spoiler: you wait and wait for something to happen, and it never does. There's a premise, of sorts, but no story, no plot, no climax, and shockingly, no ending. At some point it is just over. So what do you get from watching this movie? 78 minutes of handsome half-naked young men. If that's all you're looking for, have at it. I have nothing against half-naked young men, but I do require a bit more than that. And could they not have found anyone with even rudimentary acting skills to be in this thing? Minus points for the boring canned musical score, which is used to try and create tension where none exists.
Die Schatzinsel (1966)
Fine adaptation, but beware the English version...
What we have here, surprisingly turns out to be one of the finest film adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island that I have seen. Beloved in Germany were it first appeared as a "four-parter" at Christmas 1966, this version, while not 100% adherent to the novel, nevertheless captures a spirit of adventure that is sadly missing in many other versions. One of the more problematic aspects is the casting of Michael Ande as Jim Hawkins. At 22 this former child star is simply too old for the role, yet he is likable and attractive and plays with such a boyish verve that one soon forgets his advanced age. English actor Ivor Dean cuts a fine figure as Long John Silver and unlike so many who have played the role gets his point across without chewing the scenery. The rest of the cast is equally fine. The whole thing is beautifully filmed and looks very expensive for a television production. At 344 minutes, you'd think that it would suffer from over-length, but it does not. I watched the whole thing in one sitting, riveted. By the way, the DVD of Die Schatzinsel offers no English language subtitles, but even with my beginning German skills (I can't speak a lick of German!) I liked this a lot.
Just a word of caution: My first experience with this movie was a badly dubbed English version, cut down to movie length. I thought it was horrible, badly paced, dull, incoherent and just plain odd. Well,of course it was bad! Aside from the washed out print and the horrible voice work, over three hours of the film had been cut! Avoid that version like the plague.
L'île aux trésors (2007)
What the hell was THAT?
Like earlier commenters, I have been a fan of Treasure Island for a long time, so when I had a chance to see this new French version of the classic story I jumped at it. I've learned my lesson: look before youleap. I suppose we have the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean films to blame for this horrible "comedy/adventure" version of the story. The 1999 Jack Palance version (in which Jim throws his lot in with the pirates at the last minute) was bad, but this! The last time such violence was committed on a piece of literature was the notoriously heinous Demi Moore version of The Scarlett Letter. Make no mistake, L'Île aux Trésors has about as much in common with Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island as Gilligan's Island has with The Lord of the Flies. Oh, there's a treasure all right, and it is on an island, but that's about where the similarities end. We still have characters called Jim Hawkins (although here he is a secondary character) and John Silver, but these are not the characters you know from the book. They are dunderheaded buffoons. Look in vain for the the Admiral Benbow Inn, Blind Pew, a parrot named Polly, an apple barrel in the hold of a ship. Instead we get a dull and befuddled teenage Jim Hawkins working as a prison guard, "Short" John Silver, a drunken Dr. Livesey, a buxom blonde serial killer named Madame La Baronne Evangeline Trelawney, and man-on-man sex play in the hold. By the time the ship has reached the island there have already been so many killings on board that you start to wonder who will be left to go ashore.
I guess it's meant to be funny, and perhaps the humor is lost in translation, but it plays like a Mel Brooks comedy without the laughs. There are a lot of badly timed slapstick gags, and a few of them raise a smile, but most fall flat. You know you're in trouble when the first scene is a "comic" depiction of Silver's leg being amputated. One major character is killed off abruptly in order to make a lame joke about cannibalism. In the end it is clear that the filmmakers have nothing but contempt for Stevenson's novel or their audience. Eventually they seem to run out of ideas and the movie simply ends with Silver and La Baronne apparently the only survivors, stranded and fighting it out for the treasure. At this point Jim Hawkins has already been blown to smithereens in a wacky sequence aboard the ship involving gunpowder and a cigar, but after being dead for the last ten minutes of the film there is a brief tacked on coda showing that he somehow miraculously survived and is none the worse for the wear. I wish I could say the say the same for the audience.
Charlie and Lola (2005)
"Small and very funny"
"I have this little sister Lola. She is small and very funny." These are the words that Charlie uses to introduce each episode of Charlie and Lola, a fifteen minute cartoon from Britain currently airing in the USA on The Disney Channel, but he might as well be describing the show itself. This charming, lighthearted romp, based upon a series of picture books by Lauren Child is about Charlie, a wise, kind and very responsible boy of perhaps seven or eight years and his tiny adventures being big brother to quirky, determined, demanding and adorable Lola, age five. A typical episode concerns Charlie convincing fussy eater Lola to eat the foods on her list of things she "absolutely will never not ever eat." Rarely do we see a depiction in modern pop culture of such a healthy and loving sibling relationship as offered here. Charlie may at times be exasperated by his little sister, but he is always caring and respectful of her as he gently guides her through life, and most episodes end with the happy laughter of two children enjoying each other's company. Technically the animation is not much more advanced than that of South Park (to which this in no other way can be compared!) but is more imaginative and finely detailed. And the superb voice cast of actual children (usually child characters in animation are played by adult women, i.e. Nancy Cartwright as Bart Simpson) lifts this up to a whole other level. Pure delight.