by Jeffrey Lyles
While "Around the World in 80 Days" wasn’t as long as the title would imply, it certainly felt like it. At the very least, the film is honest in the sense that it’s every bit as terrible as it looks in the trailers.
Very loosely based on Jules Verne’s classic tale of the same name, Steve Coogan ("Coffee and Cigarettes") plays the role of Phileas Fogg, the brilliant albeit eccentric inventor who takes a bet that he’ll be able to travel around the world in, well, take a guess.
Instead of Fogg meeting and rescuing an Indian princess as described in the book, his romantic interest comes via Monique La Roche (Cécile de France, making her American film debut), an aspiring artist who sees her opportunity of finding inspiration in traveling with Fogg.
Also joining him on this quest is Passepartout (Jackie Chan, "The Tuxedo"), who only signs on as Fogg’s valet to avoid British authorities after he stole a prized item from the Bank of England.
While Chan may be past the point where he can do the kinds of cool action scenes that made him a star with films such as "Rush Hour" and "Supercop," the watered-down stunts in this film are depressing, to say the least.
Most of the fighting scenes are so cartoonish that it’s frustrating to watch. Characters get tossed out of moving trains and thrown from buildings with hardly a scratch. I kept waiting any minute for someone to stick their face into a lit cannon or fall off a cliff holding an anvil.
This is one example of why the film doesn’t seem to know who its target audience is. It offers too much slapstick comedy for adults to get anything more than a few chuckles, and a lot of the non-slapstick jokes will fly completely over the heads of younger audience members.
This leaves pre-teens as the most likely viewers to find the humor and Chan’s martial arts shtick somewhat entertaining.
I particularly appreciated how our travelers managed to find the English-speaking natives in any location they visited, which makes perfect sense since English is the main language of every country, right?
Interesting bit of movie trivia: When the original film was made, director Michael Anderson called in his Hollywood pals, including Frank Sinatra, Buster Keaton, Red Buttons, Cesar Romero and Marlene Dietrich, to make brief appearances, which is how the term "cameo appearance" originated. That version won the Academy Award for best picture in 1956.
Seeking to capture some of the same spirit of the original, the remake features some truly bizarre cameos by Rob Schneider ("50 First Dates") and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ("Terminator 3"). It is a very good thing that this film was released after the recall, or California would have gone for another candidate.
Near the end of the film, there are some good cameos, most notably the Wilson brothers, Owen ("Starsky and Hutch") and Luke ("Old School"), who make an appropriate cameo as the Wright brothers. I found myself wishing that they were the main stars of the film, since they provided the movie with its sole glimmer of promise, albeit too late to save it.
The majority of these summer releases have truly been taxing, but "Around the World in 80 Days" could be the worst of the bunch. That’s saying something since it’s in competition with "Garfield," "The Chronicles of Riddick" and "The Day After Tomorrow."
The one moment of the film I could truly relate to was when a character trapped in a small wooden prison says, "Please let me go. I’m bored." Besides having a bit more elbow room, I could sympathize with his plight. But then again, he didn’t have to suffer half as much as I did in watching this movie, so we’ll call it even.
If only Fogg could have come up with some cool invention that would stop Hollywood from releasing such terrible movies, I’d be forever indebted to him. But, hopefully, it can’t get much worse than this one.