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| Captain Nemo and the Underwater City | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 18 2010, 08:20 PM (691 Views) | |
| CliffClaven | Jun 18 2010, 08:20 PM Post #1 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Revisited this one, courtesy of TCM. It's an affable film but you can see an identity crisis at work: It looks like they couldn't choose between 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Willie Wonka (to be fair, this was made in 1969 -- two years before Wonka). It's not a sequel or prequel to 20,000 Leagues, Mysterious Island or anything else. The title character is a benevolent technocratic dictator ruling a flourishing Victorian city at the bottom of the sea. His name happens to be Nemo, and his submarine happens to be called Nautilus. They try to make a big deal of revealing his name, but evidently this Nemo is unknown to the outside world. No connection to the dark and vengeful Nemo who had more hands-on response to a warlike world. Robert Ryan plays him as a kindly, agreeable soul -- an uncle who never gets mad unless you actually break something. His Nemo even falls (gently) for Helena (Nanette Newman), a pretty single mother who is also a scholar on sea life. Helena is one of a half dozen shipwreck survivors, rescued by Nemo's crew (the underwater scenes are nicely done, but not as mythic as Disney's). We also have her small son Phillip, some guy who doesn't do well in confined spaces, two comic villains, and Chuck Connors as Fraser, an American senator on some sort of mission to reduce bloodshed on both sides in the Civil War (As close as I could guess, he's going to ask foreign armament merchants to lay off). The city itself it is lavishly and playfully decorated; there's definitely a British Oz thing going on. The inhabitants are festively dressed and include lots of kids, plus two wholesome-looking floozies. Maybe it's not a big event film, but the non-effects scenes certainly look more expensive than a George Pal or Harryhausen fantasy. Our likable, undangerous Nemo sets the tone for everything that follows. Nemo's and Helena's romance is restricted to become more and more pleasant to each other -- I'm not sure they even touch hands. Fraser gets to smooch briefly with a sexy (but pure) swimming instructor, but their most intimate conversation consists of his asking her to escape with him. The villains gape at the abundance of gold (used as cheap building material) and offer lame schtick, but never do worse than bop a guard's head (same guy, twice). Second-in-command Joab is jealous of Fraser, who has not only swiped Joab's girl but seems to have an inside track as Nemo's chosen heir -- but the worst thing he does is help Fraser escape. Oh, and they have to let the nut job drown when he tries to destroy the city. There's not even a fistfight to speak of. Helena's young son Philip figures here and there and wins a swimming competition, but he's mainly just hanging around. I wondered if this was originally planned as a more kid-oriented film with Philip as the central character, with everything seen from his point of view -- a Crayola-hued paradise, schooldays spent in an indoor pool, and Nemo as a fantasy figure of a dad (Can I take the sub out tonight?). At the same time, the good and decent Fraser says they have a duty to leave this place and do something about a messed-up world. Thinking on it, that might have made for a much better movie. Maybe in a class with the better Disneys of a few years earlier. As it stands, the movie is almost absurdly wholesome and unthreatening. Disney's 20,000 Leagues was accessible to older kids but had fiercely committed adults in a battle involving big ideas. Harryhausen's Mysterious Island substituted scary beasts for dramatic conflict, but the stakes were high and the storytelling solid. Here, the only real conflict is Fraser nobly wanting to resume his mission over Nemo's worthwhile objections. Nemo claims that Fraser's good impulses are wasted Up There, and that's as complex as it gets (although both actors try hard to sell it as a clash of importance). Even when I saw this at 14 (in a theater, I'm pretty sure), something else felt funny about Captain Nemo and the Underwater City. For all the evident money and good intentions invested in it, it felt like a movie that was just a bit too late -- like those sluggish 50's remakes of lean 30's comedies, or those lost-world epics with Doug McClure that were slicker than the old Irwin Allen potboilers but somehow less satisfying. Maybe there's a moment where certain types of movies just can't be made any more -- when they seem to reappear, it's usually something new in the old package. |
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6:37 AM Jul 11