My review was written in May 1991 after a Cannes Film Fesitval (in Un Certain Regard section) screening.
Raul Ruiz trashes adventure novels and film sinhis update of "Treasure Island", an incoherent assemblage of footage passed off as a feature film. It will confuse rather than amuse children.
Picture was produced in Portugal five years ago with Cannon bakcing. Financial problems of a a co-production partner put the picture in limbo, and the release version, handled in France by Argos Films, looks unfinished with tons of voice-over narration covering up missing scenes.
Primarily in English, with some European cast members dubbed as the American leads speak their own dialog, screenplay is mainly non sequiturs, philisophical ramblings and satire of adventure cliches. Jean-Pierre Leaud hams it up as an author figure and narrator, ultimately revealed to be inventing the disconnected episodes.
Young hero Melvil Poupaud plays Jonathan, imagining a series of arbitrary and violent adventures inspired by a tv adventure show he watches and Stevenson's novel.
Quirky characters include old sea captain Martin Landau, Jonathan's mom Anna Karina and former captain/shoemaker Vic Tayback (an untraditional Long John Silver). Charles Schmidt is a blind man who delivers an eye to Landau, and Lou Castel plays a mysterious doctor who claims to be Jonathan's father.
Following Landau's hammy and much-mocked death scene, Ruiz abandons this tack and stages a new series of adventrues at sea headed for an island of diamonds with some old cast members and some new ones.
Yves Afonso speaks in French as the captain who pilots the heroes. Film's most entertaining performances is provided by Pedro Armendariz Jr. As a loquacious Mexican who stops the picture to tell the story of Herman Melville's nolvel "Benito Cereno".
Final reels become increasingly perverse as the games-playing of the characters is stripped bare. The late Tayback is embarrassing when called upon to step out of character and berate Jonathan's performance as Jim Hawkins. Leaud kills the kid offp-screen as a particularly cynical finale.
Ruiz may amuse a small coterie of film buffs with his in-jokes, but the slooppy, halfp-baked work here is insulting in tgerms of craftsmanship. In addition to the use of distorting color filters, many scenes are murkily photographed, looking more like lab defects tha stylization.
Dialog is shot in tight closeups and action scenes are awkwardly staged and skimpy.
Raul Ruiz trashes adventure novels and film sinhis update of "Treasure Island", an incoherent assemblage of footage passed off as a feature film. It will confuse rather than amuse children.
Picture was produced in Portugal five years ago with Cannon bakcing. Financial problems of a a co-production partner put the picture in limbo, and the release version, handled in France by Argos Films, looks unfinished with tons of voice-over narration covering up missing scenes.
Primarily in English, with some European cast members dubbed as the American leads speak their own dialog, screenplay is mainly non sequiturs, philisophical ramblings and satire of adventure cliches. Jean-Pierre Leaud hams it up as an author figure and narrator, ultimately revealed to be inventing the disconnected episodes.
Young hero Melvil Poupaud plays Jonathan, imagining a series of arbitrary and violent adventures inspired by a tv adventure show he watches and Stevenson's novel.
Quirky characters include old sea captain Martin Landau, Jonathan's mom Anna Karina and former captain/shoemaker Vic Tayback (an untraditional Long John Silver). Charles Schmidt is a blind man who delivers an eye to Landau, and Lou Castel plays a mysterious doctor who claims to be Jonathan's father.
Following Landau's hammy and much-mocked death scene, Ruiz abandons this tack and stages a new series of adventrues at sea headed for an island of diamonds with some old cast members and some new ones.
Yves Afonso speaks in French as the captain who pilots the heroes. Film's most entertaining performances is provided by Pedro Armendariz Jr. As a loquacious Mexican who stops the picture to tell the story of Herman Melville's nolvel "Benito Cereno".
Final reels become increasingly perverse as the games-playing of the characters is stripped bare. The late Tayback is embarrassing when called upon to step out of character and berate Jonathan's performance as Jim Hawkins. Leaud kills the kid offp-screen as a particularly cynical finale.
Ruiz may amuse a small coterie of film buffs with his in-jokes, but the slooppy, halfp-baked work here is insulting in tgerms of craftsmanship. In addition to the use of distorting color filters, many scenes are murkily photographed, looking more like lab defects tha stylization.
Dialog is shot in tight closeups and action scenes are awkwardly staged and skimpy.