20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

CinemaSerf

After what seems like an age of prologue material, "Prof. Aronnax" (Richard Crenna) and his daughter "Sophie" (Julie Cox) finally set sail on the USS "Abraham Lincoln" under the command of "Capt. Farragut" (Jeff Harding) in search of a sea monster that has been marauding the South Seas terrorising the shipping. Luckily they have harpoon man "Ned Land" (Paul Gross) on board, so catching and killing this beast ought to be a synch. Well, the animal duly arrives and next thing, the threesome find themselves guests of the enigmatic "Capt. Nemo" (Ben Cross) who has a serious axe to grind with those on the surface. This smacks of a pilot episode to a television series. It takes far too long with character establishment then relies almost entirely on the underwater visual effects to tell a story that is really bereft of decent acting and writing skills. Jules Verne wrote a great story that offers loads to a film-maker, but Michael Anderson seems content to leave us with this lacklustre sequence of pretty predictable, lame even, adventures and there is even room for a little love triangle between the captain, the harpoonist and the daughter (who reminded me of Sheena Easton) who is fed up having to compromise as a woman in a man's world. Nothing at all memorable here, Cross is shockingly wooden and if this is the story for you, then the 1954 Disney version and the 1916 silent ones are far, far better.