Good Lord, Sean Connery, what is up with you these days? I swear, this guy couldn't pick a decent film to star in if his life depended on the decision. I've watched the man scowl and furrow his brow in more than a handful of junk pictures, from Medicine Man, which is merely dull, to The Avengers, which is hilarious but still insanely horrible. And now he's in this piece of pure tedium known as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a title that couldn't be longer if it tried. This isn't even an example of laughable bad, either, the kind of bad where you can just sit back and have fun watching the crap hit the fan. LXG, as it's confusingly called in ads, is merely boring and a total waste of one's time. Granted, the premise could lend itself to an excellent adventure film: bring together all of these classic literary characters and have them fight for a common cause. And I'm sure that while the comic book on which this film is based is very good (I base that on word of mouth), something went very wrong here. None of the characters are the least bit interesting, and half the time they just sit around droning on about stuff we don't give a flying flip about. The special effects are decent, if somewhat out of an old PS2 game, but the main story is just a disaster. We start off with newspapers flying at the screen, each one bearing a plot revealing headline (cliche #1). Then we meet Sean Connery's character, who is exactly like every other role the man has portrayed: ruff, gruff, and grumpy. We learn that a world war may occur if Mr. Connery doesn't organize a team of heroes and stop an evil villain known as The Phantom (a title that was used in another failed suphero film, coincidentally). But sadly, The Phantom is not a very cool bad guy. Villains have to just drip with evil in these comic book adaptations, like The Green Goblin or The Kingpin. But The Phantom just comes off as a big dork in a Phantom of the Opera mask and mink furs. And when we learn his true identity, it's not so much as shocking as it is laughable. It's at this point that the audience realizes how much of a dip The Phantom is and how he couldn't take over the world if it was handed to him on a silver platter. With the gaggle of comic book films hitting theaters, one was bound to stink like orangutang poo, and LXG is definitely that film. When will Hollywood execs figure out that saturating the market with one type of movie just because Spiderman succeeded can lead to pure garbage? 1/4 stars.
Review of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
