Spoonixel Amateur movie with Big budget

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

SteveResin Legendary movie I only saw once, back in the day when it was released. I remember watching it with mouth wide open, aghast at what I was seeing. It's widely regarded as one of the worst films in history, and in many ways it is, if you consider the quality of the cast, director and budget.But revisiting it 20 years later after seeing the interesting documentary "Lost Souls" about this car crash of a movie, I didn't find it quite so bad. It's poor, no doubt about it, but it's not tedious and mind numbing in a Battlefield Earth kind of way and nowhere near real dross like Batman & Robin or The Spirit. It's entertaining for many reasons, chief among them being Marlon Brando's blatant trolling of the entire production, insisting on wearing white make up and using buckets instead of hats to keep his head cool. His performance is worth the admission alone.The rest is worth watching for the implosion of Val Kilmer's career as an A-List actor. Fresh from the success of films like The Doors, Batman Forever and Heat he was apparently extremely arrogant during the making of this film, and he just oozes apathy in every scene he's in. If he truly was as insufferable as he's been accused of in "Lost Souls" then karma certainly paid him a visit here, as his career never recovered from this wreck. Fairuza Balk is decent and tries her best with weak material, Ron Perlman is solid as always, but David Thewlis is miscast, his North England accent and bad teeth detracting from his performance. But those scenes with Brando and the worlds smallest man as his freaky sidekick are pure gold.The make up effects are decent, and the location is gorgeous. Everything else is terrible. But it's certainly entertaining, even if it for all the wrong reasons.

katianie9 This movie is very very dumb, The writing is awful and makes no sense, the reasoning/motivation for every action makes no sense, the lines are awful. It's obvious Brando just did stuff and no one could say anything because "hes Brando" so the film suffers from his decisions (such as wearing a bucket of ice on his head for no reason).I will say this; The acting itself is well done. The actors/actresses do an amazing job with the terrible script, plot, motivations, and direction of the movie. Fairuza Balk does an amazing job and actually took me away from the terrible movie briefly with her great acting. I gave this 2/10 instead of a 1 because of the great acting by Fairuza Balk and David Thewlis.It's a shame because I think all the actors and actresses really wanted to work on the project because it was with Brando and it was the first major film for some of them. Unfortunately Brando's arrogance, terrible writing, terrible plot, bad directing all sink the movie.A few ways I think I would improve the film is this; use less camera shots, stick with just the shot of them in the car pulling up to the compound instead of showing the whole place in 5 different shots. I think for this movie, less shots would have helped keep the mystery and the creepy of the island. Besides that the writing needed a huge overhaul and the actors (not Brando) needed more of a say.

Leofwine_draca An unnecessary second remake (following the oft-forgotten '77 version with Michael York) of 1932's THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, based of course on the classic short story by H.G. Wells. A huge flop on release, this movie starts off pretty well and looks extremely promising with the crisp, highly colourful photography and interesting locations (Queensland actually). Sadly it deteriorates constantly as it goes on, until it becomes an almost parody of itself at the end, and is completely impossible to take seriously!Directorial disputes resulted in original director Richard Stanley being fired in place of the more mainstream John Frankenheimer, although even his veteran presence can't hide the dodgy editing and episodic nature of the narrative. The movie opens very promisingly with an well-choreographed fight aboard a rubber dinghy (trust me, it is very impressive) but that about as exciting as it gets. British star David Thewlis (not a bad actor, but his character is far too whiny to be likable) meets up with the ever-grouchy Val Kilmer, who takes him a remote island where they meet the incredible Marlon Brando. Brando overacts as never before in this movie, dressed in a white sheet and white face-paint, and his hamminess knows no bounds; his performance is so terribly and completely off beat that it serves as one of the movie's highlights.Soon afterwards, a hyena man discovers the implant which Moreau uses to control him through painful shocks, and tears it out, thus inciting a riot amongst the beast men, who eventually storm the island and learn how to use guns. The action-packed finale is absolutely terrible and laughable, with the beast men having far too much screen time (forget the eerie glimpses in the original - here they're on screen for ages which totally ruins their impact) and running and jumping about all over the place before they all kill each other.Aside from the miscast Thewlis, the wooden Kilmer and the laughable Brando, there is one other main character - Fairuza Balk (THE CRAFT), who plays a panther woman. Balk is far more attractive here than she was as the teenage witch in that other '96 horror movie, and indeed her feral beauty does most of the acting for her. Hidden inside costumes and make-up are a number of noted actors like Ron Perlman, Mark Dacascos, and Verne Troyer, but you'd never recognise them. The special effects are by Stan Winston, and the beast men are initially very impressive, with CGI being interspersed flawlessly with live-action footage. Sadly their overexposure soon shows and, as you see more and more of them, the less impressive they become until the laughing stocks of the finale.The morals are muddled and the film ends in an inconclusive fashion with most of the cast dead and the rest carrying on with their lives. A tragedy it is not as most of the dead characters are selfish and unlikeable or just plain odd. In the other versions, Moreau was attacked and killed at the end of the film, but that happens halfway through here, leaving the movie floundering with nowhere to really go afterwards. Kilmer ends up going mad too and dressing as Brando, but the irritatingly non-conclusive script means that you never figure out why.With an above average cast wasted along with a substantial budget, hopefully the poor reception of this movie at the box office has put off any other chancers with an idea of making a buck from a remake of a classic horror film. In an ideal world it certainly would, but I'm not so sure. THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU is worth a look as a curiosity piece for sure, but it feels all the more frustrating as you get the impression that a good idea is in here somewhere, waiting to get out.

chwalker-christopher David Thewlis' twitchy performance is so irritating I could barely sit thru it, and as for Brando... roll eyes... yeesh. The screenplay mercilessly exposes all the weaknesses in the source material, and the director's utter inability to make even one character sympathetic makes the film's Grand Guignol aspect rather tedious.The only plot development I could react to with even a flicker of mild interest was the escape scene at the end; I thought it was a pity that anyone escaped, as they were all so disagreeable. And then - the moralizing voice-over! Did they honestly think we didn't *GET IT*????? Yowza!I would recommend that fans with an extreme carnal interest in Mr. Kilmer's physical charms should rent the video, and plan to make liberal use of the fast-forward button. What a dog. YMMV, of course.