Feels Like 80 Days
You might think that with the technological advances in moviemaking since 1956, this new version of Around the World in 80 Days would at least look better than its predecessor did. You could not be faulted for believing you’d be wowed by the Rube Goldberg gadgets of inventor Phileas Fogg. And surely a studio as desperate for a hit as Walt Disney Pictures would be willing to invest some small fortune in its one best shot at a summer kiddie hit. But expect nothing from this $110 million movie, because that’s all it delivers. Even the 1989 made-for-TV version starring Pierce Brosnan possessed more spark and steam than this lazy, lackluster take.
And do not even think of comparing the 2004 variant with the 1956 Oscar winner. That movie, with David Niven as Fogg, was overlong, overblown and overcooked, but at least it looked opulent and possessed a wry screenplay cowritten by S.J. Perelman. It took three people to write this one and claims as its director the man who made The Waterboy. Even its cameos are bargain-bin: Whereas the ’56 film boasted Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Peter Lorre, and John Carradine, this one has to make do with Rob Schneider and, most distressingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger as a lecherous prince with a dyed-black Carrot Top wig.
This is barely an adaptation of the Verne novel at all. Rather, it’s a Jackie Chan vehicle shoehorned into hoary material that steals its central plot from Shanghai Knights. In both films, Chan plays a devoted son who has to return to his father an ancient artifact stolen from his village. Here, Chan plays the role of Fogg’s valet, Passepartout, and Steve Coogan is his employer. Chan’s American movies all look and feel the same. Some are more dreary than others (The Tuxedo, say), but all are mundane action comedies in which Chan engages in a few amusing, elaborately staged fight sequences while playing sidekick to someone for whom English is not a second language.
But Coogan’s decision to appear in this film is particularly distressing, because it suggests a baldfaced desire to swap hipster respectability for the easy paycheck that comes with making summertime cotton candy. The star of 24 Hour Party People and one of the highlights of Jim Jarmusch’s new Coffee and Cigarettes has been emasculated by screenwriters who reduce him to Chan’s cardboard straight man.
Everything about this new 80 Days feels cheap and smells musty. It looks like something filmed on a studio back lot that’s been closed for years. And there are scant scenes of Chan and Coogan — and Cécile de France as Coogan’s love interest — actually traveling from one country to another. Instead, the transitions are entirely computer generated, with France and India and San Francisco made to look like neon approximations of a Disneyland ride. It gives the impression that none of the actors ever left the studio, save for some scenes in which a lush and mountainous Thailand stands in for China. You’re thankful for the fresh air after the stale stench of everything surrounding it.
