The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Review

"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" arrives in plenty of time for the half term holiday and its easy to see why: it's an action-packed popcorn tale will go down a storm with bored schoolboys looking for a fun way to wile away a damp October day. This tale of an unlikely band of Victorian literary characters stars Sean Connery as ageing action hero Allan Quartermain, a man who recruits legendary seafarer Captain Nemo, US Secret Service agent Tom Sawyer, Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde, the immortal and ever youthful Dorian Gray, Dracula victim Mina Harker and an Invisible Man to take on the international menace of The Fantom, a dastardly villain determined to topple the countries of the globe into a world war. Can our gallant band of brave adventurers stop him? Well, what do you think?

This movie had what they politely refer to in Hollywood as a "troubled production." Sets were swept away by floods and the director and leading man practically came to blows on set. What's more, the fact that the movie is liberally adapted from a successful graphic novel meant that there were countless fan boys out there determined not to enjoy it before they'd even bought a ticket. However if you can forget about all that baggage then you're left with a fairly typical Hollywood blockbuster. The script may contain some curious lapses of logic but the film is ultimately built around a truly entertaining premise and certainly delivers the CGI set pieces we have come to expect. "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is not then a film for critics, but is instead a prime slice of Saturday night Hollywood hokum.