There are few things which can cause as much terror as a teacher in a movie telling a group of children that they have to “rehearse” for the big festivities.
We all know where that’s going to lead.
Now the best explanation I’ve seen for this film is that it had been fifteen years since Disney released their version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and six years since it was re-released. Without home video or television showings, very few people who went to see this one would have seen the earlier film recently enough to remember it clearly.
And there is nothing that helps a film more than not having a far superior film in everyone’s minds when they watch it.
You don’t have to squint too hard to see that this film has the same basic plot as Verne’s novel: a terrible storm wrecks a ship and Captain Nemo and his men rescue the survivors and take them to his underwater city, where they are his guests…for life.
Several of them plot to escape, although the city is such a utopia — with all the free ale you can drink — that most of them don’t want to leave.
And that’s about it.
Mind you, it’s a beautiful production. It has a dazzling sense of steampunk design, with an interesting (if highly impractical looking) version of the Nautilus, great sets, wild and colorful costumes, and a lot of underwater sequences. The models look quite good although I don’t think much of their monster: it’s a giant stingray, which can flap its wings a bit, and open its mouth, but not much more. It isn’t much of a substitute for that classic giant squid from the Disney film, with its forest of moving tentacles and the dramatic storm which arrives at the same time.
But fortunately, only a few in the audience will have seen it.
But the story is decidedly limp, with the expected touristy trips through the city, a couple of characters in search of gold (which is absurdly plentiful), a couple of monster attacks, and a big Life Day (okay, okay, “All Oceans Day” or something absurd like that) Celebration.
Although there is only a swimming race, and no big song number for the kids. For which we are eternally grateful.
It’s really hard to associate the character Robert Ryan is playing with Captain Nemo. He seems more like a businessman or bureaucrat, a shrewd administrator of a small community, rather than a daring innovator or a moody and brooding figure who rejected the outer world in favor of his own underwater fantasy. In fact, we never really see him brooding at all.
It also seems exceedingly odd that he and one of survivors end up falling in love.
Oh, well, it’s better than making him a gothic hero, falling for the girl who’s in love with another man in the 1997 version.
Mind you, Chuck Connors seems to fit a lot better as a tough U.S. Senator who wants to save the world from itself. And the rest of the cast is reasonably good and comes complete with a Bond Girl, a Carry On movies regular and a Stepford Wife.
Now, I’ll admit that the Disney film suffers from some of the same dramatic problems — it, too, sags a bit in the middle. Frankly, you can blame Verne, as they come almost directly from the novel, which also spends most of its length on exploring the wonders of Nemo’s world.
The problem is that, despite some great production design and a lot of very cool steampunk hardware, there isn’t much else here. It feels very slow, even if it is almost half an hour shorter than Disney’s film. It almost seems as if their motto when they made this one was “bigger is better”: not only do we get two — count them, two — Nautiluses, but he is no longer merely a renegade Sea Captain, but the ruler of his own private Kingdom.
But bigger is never enough, even if that 150 foot Stingray might very well be bigger than Disney’s giant squid.
So it’s probably not worth the effort to find this one. There are far better versions of the story out there, and the visuals aren’t impressive enough to carry the entire film.
And darn it, Nemo should be far more brooding!…
rivets on the poster 