From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Sep 5 16:39:58 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsrelay.netins.net!news.dacom.co.kr!arclight.uoregon.edu!netnews.worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: mredman@bvoice.com (Michael Redman) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 4 Sep 1996 17:42:03 GMT Organization: ... Lines: 60 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <50kf1b$5p5@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: mredman@bvoice.com (Michael Redman) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #05951 Keywords: author=Redman Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5318 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1074 THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU A film review by Michael Redman Copyright 1996 Michael Redman ** (out of ****) Remember the scene near the end of "Apocalypse Now" where the boat finally makes it to the village? What they find is a hidden society filled with inhabitants involved in strange rituals and run by the bigger than life God-King Marlon Brando. This film takes that village even further into the Twilight Zone. Edward Douglas (David Thewlis) is rescued from a life raft after drifting for days in the Java sea when his plane crashed on the way to his assignment as a UN peace negotiator. He is taken to a lush island by an increasingly crazed doctor -- or is he a vet? -- Montgomery (Val Kilmer). The place is run by Dr. Moreau (Marlon Brando) who is splicing human and various animal DNA in order to create the perfect non-violent being. Of course things fall apart. Montgomery starts the dominos tumbling by killing a rabbit for dinner, then dead rabbits are found around the island. A manimal is killed because he killed and dirty dog Hyena takes over. Trouble in paradise. Almighty Brando can't keep them under control as they revert more and more to their animal selves. This is the third film based on the H. G. Wells book and is visually hypnotizing. Each scene on the island is overflowing with mood and movement. Men, animals and everything inbetween crowd the dark and mutable screen. Montgomery's warning to Douglas describes the entire film, "Be careful, there are a lot of unstable phenomena out there." Like much of "Apocalypse Now", there's far too much going on to catch it all and that's the way it's supposed to be. The over-stimulation crowds your senses, leaving few details, but creating a massive impression of foggy and breathtaking eeriness. Brando's Moreau is beyond outlandish as he is carried on a litter, dressed in a muumuu, coated with pancake makeup and giving forth the law while swamped and worshipped by his creations. Kilmer is just a bit less bizarre as the drug doctor heading into insanity. His Brando Junior impression is a masterpiece of the grotesque and fantastic. Yeah, the extravagant make-up, sets and dark and murky feel of the film are grand, but occasionally the story rears its ugly head and that's the downfall of the movie. The religious overtones are extremely heavy handed and the add-on preachy montage at the end is just horrid. Very little happens for a reason. Characterization is minimal and often sacrificed for sensationalism. We have no idea who any of these people are or what lead them to the situation they find themselves in. The animals are easier to care about than the humans. See this film if you're up for a disturbing visual treat, but don't expect anything beyond that. [This appeared in "The Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana, 8/27/96. Michael Redman can be reached at mredman@bvoice.com] From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Sep 12 12:57:06 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!news.stealth.net!demos!news1.relcom.ru!EU.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in3.uu.net!netnews.worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: inkpot@bizdir.com.sg (Jack Choo) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 10 Sep 1996 18:08:37 GMT Organization: The Flying Inkpot Lines: 88 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <514ar5$4ja@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: inkpot@bizdir.com.sg (Jack Choo) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #05963 Keywords: author=Choo Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5328 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1080 THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU A film review by Jack Choo Copyright 1996 The Flying Inkpot Directed by : John Frankenheimer Screenplay by : Richard Stanley & Ron Hutchinson (based on the 1896 H.G.Wells Book) Cast : Marlon Brando (Dr. Moreau), Val Kilmer (Montgomery), David Thewlis (Douglas), Fairuza Balk (Aissa), Daniel Rigney (Hyena-Swine), Temuera Morrison (Azazello) Produced by : New Line Cinema Running Time : 1hr 40minutes Rating : ** out of ***** THE CLASSIC STORY & THE PRODUCTION WHICH RUINED IT Marking the centennial anniversary of the 1896 H.G.Wells classic, New Line Cinema, armed with a stellar cast and expert make-up effects man Stan Winston (Alien, Predator, Terminator etc) churns out yet another Hollywood film based on the classic novel. Of course, the production is no doubt much more superior compared to the earlier 2 movies, one of which was made back in the 1933 and the other in the 1977, under the title THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (sounds like a much better title..). The story begins with Edward Douglas (Thewlis), a UN representative sent to oversee a peace treaty somewhere in the south pacific, who is saved from the brink of death by Montgomery (Kilmer) after his plane crashes into the sea. Douglas soon learns that Montgomery is working for Dr.Moreau, who incidently, owns the island and also a reputable geneticist who has been awarded the Nobel prize. His host's reluctance to allow him to freely move around the island becomes clear when he stumbled into Moreau's lab, when a monstrous birth was in progress. Even worse, the other workers in the lab are not exactly normal "people." Douglas stumbles across yet another shocking discovery when he is led to the beast-people community, which considers Dr.Moreau their maker. Using shock-therapy and the Law, Dr.Moreau has long been able to keep his beast-people civilised to some extent but there are a few animal-men who are just too savage to be controlled. THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU questions the ability of men playing god. Dr.Moreau is a man obsessed with creating a race of beings which is free from hate and violence...but the savage within every beast is not something one can suppress for long. MOREAU has no doubt a very interesting premise within its grasp. Even so, the production has failed to make the most out of it. There are too many characters to put your attention to and the worst thing is, the characters are not "prioritized" so when the audience is led to believe that a particular character is important, before they know it, he or she or it perishes....rather ungloriously at times too. Perhaps there is some redemption in the development of the beast people, especially Aissa (Balk), the most human of Moreau's creations. The two very important characters, Montgomery and Dr.Moreau himself receive no development at all and it is in this area that the script fails miserably. More screen time could have been used for character interaction and development. I really would have liked it better if, say, they delved more into Dr.Moreau's obsession, Montgomery's purpose in the story and justification to as why the beast-people had to rebel. Maybe the nature of the screenplay, which incidently, does not incorporate much action sequences in the film, forced the filmmakers to "cut a long story short" and make it more of an action film than anything else (it's still summer, and movies have to be "marketable"). The special effects too, are really nothing for anyone to shout about. At most, I would say the beast-men looked just a bit more realistic than those apes in PLANET OF THE APES. This H.G.Wells classic really has potential to be a good film. Unfortunately, after 2 adaptations, they still could not decide on how and what to focus their attention on to really bring out that important message which makes up the entire essence of the story. As a third outing, THE ISLAND OF DR.MOREAU accomplishes little and is nothing more than an inferior version of `THE PLANET OF THE APES'.

The Flying Inkpot Rating System: * Wait for the TV2 broadcast. ** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha! *** Pretty good, bring a friend. **** Amazing, potent stuff. ***** Perfection. See it twice. ____________________________________________________________ This movie review was written for THE FLYING INKPOT, the Singaporean zine that dares to say "Bok." For a spanking good time, visit THE FLYING INKPOT at ____________________________________________________________ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jul 8 07:07:43 2003 From: Dragan Antulov Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrospective: Island of Dr. Moreau, The (1996) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.past-films Date: Fri, 09 May 2003 19:16:47 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 34800 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1136880 X-RT-TitleID: 1072156 X-RT-AuthorID: 1307 X-RT-RatingText: 2/10 Summary: r.a.m.r. #34800 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 65 Path: news.island.liu.se!news.Update.UU.SE!puffinus.its.uu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!uninett.no!feed.news.nacamar.de!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: news.island.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:6627 rec.arts.sf.reviews:549 THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1996) A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 2003 Some movies have misfortune of being made before their time. In case of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, 1996 science fiction adventure directed by John Frankenheimer, that time was only few months in the future. Considering the film's subject matter, the movie could have gained much more publicity if its release have coincided with the news about sheep Dolly. However, that wasn't the film's only misfortune. The plot, based on the classic science fiction novel by H.G. Wells, starts in 2015. Edward Douglas (played by David Thewlis), member of UN peace mission, is the only survivor of the plane crash. His life raft, that drifts across Java Sea, is rescued by Montgomery (played by Val Kilmer), a neurosurgeon who works in the island compound ran by famous geneticist Dr. Moreau (played by Marlon Brando). Once on the island, Douglas is cautioned never to leave his premises and he soon finds out why. It turns out that Dr. Moreau, in the attempt to make a better human being, spliced the human and animal genes. The island is populated by results of such experiments - half-human half-animal "hybrids" burdened by identity crisis. Dr. Moreau uses sophisticated electronic equipment and drugs in order to keep "hybrids" under control, but mysterious absenc of Montgomery would gradually create chaos. Shooting of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU was burdened with enormous problems - Val Kilmer acting like primadona, endless re- writes of the screenplay, director Robert Stanley being fired over "creative differences" and few actors literally trying to escape from the set, being traumatised by harsh conditions in Australian locations. All that was hardly recipe for success and John Frankenheimer, hired to finish the shooting, could do very little to save this film from its fate. The plot is disorganised mess and even the presence of Stan Winston couldn't prevent "hybrids" from looking like real people under bad make-up. The message about man's inability to play with nature is buried somewhere beneath all this nonsense. There are few interesting and unintentionally funny moments in the film - Fairuza Balk doing a little bit of belly-dancing, Marlon Brando's character trying to stop mutants by playing "Rhapsody in Blue" on piano and Val Kilmer doing superb Marlon Brando impersonation. But fans of H.G. Wells and genre films in general would do themselves a service if they skip this one. RATING: 2/10 (-) Review written on May 9th 2003 Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://www.purger.com/users/drax/reviews.htm - Movie Reviews in English http://www.ofcs.org - Online Film Critics Society ========== X-RAMR-ID: 34800 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1136880 X-RT-TitleID: 1072156 X-RT-AuthorID: 1307 X-RT-RatingText: 2/10