To win a bet, an eccentric British inventor, beside his Chinese valet and an aspiring French artist, embarks on a trip full of adventures and dangers around the world in exactly eighty days.
Former C.I.A. spy Bob Ho takes on his toughest assignment to date: looking after his girlfriend's three kids, who haven't exactly warmed to their mom's beau.
Director:
Brian Levant
Stars:
Jackie Chan,
Amber Valletta,
Billy Ray Cyrus
Mr. Bean wins a trip to Cannes where he unwittingly separates a young boy from his father and must help the two come back together. On the way he discovers France, bicycling, and true love, among other things.
Director:
Steve Bendelack
Stars:
Rowan Atkinson,
Willem Dafoe,
Steve Pemberton
On a quest to find out what happened to his missing brother, a scientist, his nephew and their mountain guide discover a fantastic and dangerous lost world in the center of the earth.
Having recovered from wounds received in a failed rescue operation, Navy SEAL Shane Wolfe is handed a new assignment: Protect the five Plummer kids from enemies of their recently deceased father -- a government scientist whose top-secret experiment remains in the kids' house.
Security guard Larry Daley infiltrates the Smithsonian Institution in order to rescue Jedediah and Octavius, who have been shipped to the museum by mistake.
Insp. Jacques Clouseau teams up with a squad of International detectives who are just as bumbling as he is. Their mission: Stop a globe-trotting thief who specializes in stealing historical artifacts.
A newly recruited night security guard at the Museum of Natural History discovers that an ancient curse causes the animals and exhibits on display to come to life and wreak havoc.
An adventurer, Passepartout, ends up accompanying time-obsessed English gentleman, Phileas Fogg, on a daring mission to journey around the world. Fogg has wagered with members of his London club that he can traverse the world in 80 days. Along the way, they encounter many interesting 19th Century figures and have many exciting and suspenseful situations in their voyage around the world.Written by
kakubisc@imdb.com
Paramount Pictures was originally going to release this movie in North America, but dropped it due to concerns about its commercial prospects, leading Disney to buy the domestic rights. See more »
Goofs
In the opening shot, Big Ben is shown on the south of the Thames, when it should be on the north. See more »
Quotes
Monique La Roche:
[dedication on a painting]
I travelled the world for inspiration, and found it in a man who lives what he dreams.
See more »
Alternate Versions
Some commercial television prints cut out the Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo sequence. See more »
There are classic films and fun films and even, very rarely, fun films that become classics. That's certainly true of Mike Todd's 1956 "Around the World in 80 Days" which captured much of the fantastical verve of Jules Verne's original story. That movie also introduced, basically for the first time, the idea of an onslaught of cameo appearances by famous screen stars, not always readily identifiable.
So now as we start to bake at the beginning of a long, languid summer, new director Frank Coraci gives us the irrepressible but getting a bit long-in-the-tooth master acrobat/gymnast/kung-fu artist/stunt man Jackie Chan in a very loose adaptation of the Verne novel.
Chan is Passepartout, valet to the inimitably neurotic inventor, Phineas Fogg (Steve Coogan), but in this film his real identity is that of a Chinese fellow, Lau Xing, whose mission is to return a stolen Buddha statue to his village. Nefarious English lords have an imperialistic and self-aggrandizing plan of their own which includes tearing down the Great Wall of China to get easy access to jade mines. Jim Broadbent is superbly Victorian-evil as Lord Kelvin, the head of the Royal Society of Science who challenges inventor Fogg to succeed in traversing the Earth in 80 days or else cease and desist forever from engaging in scientific experimentation and Rube Goldberg-like inventing.
Passepartout, who swiped the Buddha, has both cops and Chinese killers, led by a woman, General Fang, in hot pursuit and his service to Fogg is a guise to get back to China.
Arriving in Paris, they are joined by the beautiful semi-Impressionist painter, Monique La Roche played by the rising young French actress, Cecile De France. Winsome and cute, De France clearly had a great time making this flick.
Coogan plays Fogg very well-in fact he's the most interesting actor in the movie. He took his role of a Henry Higgins-type scholarly recluse who slowly falls in love seriously.
The story proceeds predictably. While Chan is the star, his performance is simply a well-choreographed reprise of past made-in-the West films where he can show off his skills. It's "Shanghai Night" all over again. Perhaps this is his last such movie as his announcement earlier this week that he intends to be a "serious" actor from now on pushed Iraq, gasoline prices and the Bush-Kerry campaign off the front pages.
As with the original movie, cameo appearances are a small but welcome treat. The guy who beat Mary Carey for governor of a western state last year is really devilishly funny as an Istanbul prince with a harem and an eye for acquiring Monique. The Wilson brothers play two young and later to be famous siblings whose great stunt at Kitty Hawk supposedly changed the world. And Cathy Bates seems to have had a tough time not laughing as she acted the part of the hardly imperious Widow of Windsor.
The set designs, cinematography and special effects are really excellent. I can see several Oscar nominations forthcoming.
Don't take this movie seriously-it won't dislodge the original from the pantheon of lastingly memorable films. Enjoy it as the summer fun vehicle it's meant to be. Or in any event is.
8/10
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There are classic films and fun films and even, very rarely, fun films that become classics. That's certainly true of Mike Todd's 1956 "Around the World in 80 Days" which captured much of the fantastical verve of Jules Verne's original story. That movie also introduced, basically for the first time, the idea of an onslaught of cameo appearances by famous screen stars, not always readily identifiable.
So now as we start to bake at the beginning of a long, languid summer, new director Frank Coraci gives us the irrepressible but getting a bit long-in-the-tooth master acrobat/gymnast/kung-fu artist/stunt man Jackie Chan in a very loose adaptation of the Verne novel.
Chan is Passepartout, valet to the inimitably neurotic inventor, Phineas Fogg (Steve Coogan), but in this film his real identity is that of a Chinese fellow, Lau Xing, whose mission is to return a stolen Buddha statue to his village. Nefarious English lords have an imperialistic and self-aggrandizing plan of their own which includes tearing down the Great Wall of China to get easy access to jade mines. Jim Broadbent is superbly Victorian-evil as Lord Kelvin, the head of the Royal Society of Science who challenges inventor Fogg to succeed in traversing the Earth in 80 days or else cease and desist forever from engaging in scientific experimentation and Rube Goldberg-like inventing.
Passepartout, who swiped the Buddha, has both cops and Chinese killers, led by a woman, General Fang, in hot pursuit and his service to Fogg is a guise to get back to China.
Arriving in Paris, they are joined by the beautiful semi-Impressionist painter, Monique La Roche played by the rising young French actress, Cecile De France. Winsome and cute, De France clearly had a great time making this flick.
Coogan plays Fogg very well-in fact he's the most interesting actor in the movie. He took his role of a Henry Higgins-type scholarly recluse who slowly falls in love seriously.
The story proceeds predictably. While Chan is the star, his performance is simply a well-choreographed reprise of past made-in-the West films where he can show off his skills. It's "Shanghai Night" all over again. Perhaps this is his last such movie as his announcement earlier this week that he intends to be a "serious" actor from now on pushed Iraq, gasoline prices and the Bush-Kerry campaign off the front pages.
As with the original movie, cameo appearances are a small but welcome treat. The guy who beat Mary Carey for governor of a western state last year is really devilishly funny as an Istanbul prince with a harem and an eye for acquiring Monique. The Wilson brothers play two young and later to be famous siblings whose great stunt at Kitty Hawk supposedly changed the world. And Cathy Bates seems to have had a tough time not laughing as she acted the part of the hardly imperious Widow of Windsor.
The set designs, cinematography and special effects are really excellent. I can see several Oscar nominations forthcoming.
Don't take this movie seriously-it won't dislodge the original from the pantheon of lastingly memorable films. Enjoy it as the summer fun vehicle it's meant to be. Or in any event is.
8/10