"Carbonation? Cool!" - A truly bizarre choice of words that I'm almost positive have never before been used by anyone living or dead in the annals of civilization that can only be heard in the infamous Alyssa Milano stinker EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY & I PAID TO SEE STAR KID

The month of July proved a major disappointment to me for one particular reason. Since the Mississippi Gulf Coast has become something along the lines of the Atlantic City of the South what with our overabundance of casinos, we suburban rednecks have been blessed with an opportunity to see some live theatrical shows we'd never had a chance in hell of seeing otherwise. From Broadway shows to fancy (overly artsy, if you ask me) European and Asian circuses, the Gulf Coast has been given a shot of culture the likes of which it's never had before. But screw that crap because the theatrical show I wanted to see that was set for a run at the theater of one of the two local Grand Casinos. This would have been schlock theater at it's finest but sadly things would not work out in my favor. I hope you're ready for this because I swear to you that I'm not making this up. Schedule for a two week run in the month of July was NEIL SIMON'S THE ODD COUPLE starring Sherman Hemsley and Pat Morita! For those of who don't know, Sherman Hemsley is better known as George Jefferson from TV's The Jeffersons and Pat Morita is most famous for playing Mr. Miyagi in the KARATE KID flicks. Think about that for a second. George Jefferson and Mr. Miyagi as Oscar and Felix in a live theatrical version of THE ODD COUPLE. Could there really be an odder couple than those two? Sadly, the show was cancelled at the last minute due to Pat Morita's arthritis flaring up to the point that he could not perform. And thus I was denied what was truly going to be a once in a lifetime experience. "Weezie! Wax on! Wax off!"

LXMP - THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY MATTE PAINTINGS

Let's talk about THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY MATTE PAINTINGS, shall we? Rarely does one see a movie so loaded from start to finish with obvious matte painting after matte painting that doesn't have the words "Directed By Tim Burton" in the opening credits. However, the sheer amounts of illogic, incoherence, and idiocy combined with an endless number of underdeveloped characters make it the greatest movie Stephen Sommers never made. It's X-MEN gone steampunk but minus any of the actual literacy its principal characters hail from. But the reality is this movie was doomed from the start.

The real death's knell for this movie happened behind the scenes as Director Stephen Norrington, star Sean Connery, and producer Don Murphy were involved in a power struggle over control of the movie. Problems began early in the shoot when all of the sets in Prague were destroyed when the city experienced severe flooding in the summer of 2002. Then there was simply dealing with Sean Connery, who is notorious for being difficult to work with and apparently he exercised his creative control power whenever possible. It also didn't help things that the producer was Don Murphy, who is sort of regarded as being another Jon Peters and by that I mean he's considered by many to be someone who you wouldn't even want to put in charge of the shake machine at McDonald's let alone making creative decisions regarding a multi-million dollar film project. In the end, Norrington supposedly turned in an incomplete rough cut and requested more money to finish the film's FX only to be turned down so he basically walked away from it all. In fact, Norrington had such a bad experience with LXG that he's walking away from Hollywood for some time to come. Connery, on the other hand, stepped in to help edit what there was of the film. Truth be told, I rather doubt the greatest film editors on Earth could have made a coherent movie out of this mess but one this is for sure and that is that Sean Connery has no business being allowed in the editing bay.

Now admittedly, I am not all that familiar with the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN comic book on which the movie is loosely based and by loosely based I mean the movie has about as much in common with the original comic book as JESUS CHRIST VAMPIRE HUNTER has with the Bible. I know enough about the comic to know that the basic premise is about the only thing that didn't get lost in the translation to the silver screen. Probably a good thing I'm not a devotee to the comic book otherwise I might be spitting up blood right about now. Make no bones about, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN aka LXG aka THE LEAGUE aka MURPHY'S FOLLY is a terrible piece of filmmaking. However, there's a great deal of schlocky fun to be found in some its awfulness if you can appreciate such things. For those of you who have been living under a rock, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY MATTE PAINTINGS is sort of an 1899 version of X-Men with each of the characters being based on a famous literary character of the same relative era.

And they are:

Sean Connery as legendary adventurer Allan Quartermain, who Connery plays as pretty much the same character Connery plays in every movie these days. Connery doesn't play characters anymore. Connery plays Connery. Fortunately, he's very good at that.

Then you have The Invisible Man. Not the original and not even the one from the comic but some thief named Skinner who got his hands of the invisibility formula and after finally being caught by the police agrees to join the League in exchange for being given the antidote so he can become visible again. Skinner comes close to matching Joe Piscopo's record set in the movie DEAD HEAT for the sheer number of unfunny one-liners uttered by a supporting character in the course of a movie.

Osama Bin Laden plays Captain Nemo. Sorry, the beard threw me off for a moment there. Captain Nemo is actually one of the best characters in the movie except when he starts doing martial arts. Look, I'm willing to buy that Captain Nemo is a brilliant inventor and an expert swordsman. I'm not willing to buy that he can do Jet Li caliber kung fu.

Next up is Mina Harker, our vampire lady even though she wasn't one in the comics. Not only is she a vampire, she also happens to be like Agent Scully from The X-Files in that she's also a scientist or at least she just happens to know a great deal about the scientific properties of certain compounds in the one scene in the movie where it's required.

Then we have what could have been the movie's best characters, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. Unfortunately, we get to know virtually nothing about Dr. Jeckyll other than he a sexually repressed nerd and he's not proud of his alter ego. Mr. Hyde, you know I really would have cast him as more of the Wolverine of the group, more of a feral yet well-spoken warrior but instead they've made him this Incredible Hulk character. Jeckyll transforms into this massive hulking behemoth. Anyone who bitched about the effects in THE HULK should take one look at Mr. Hyde in this movie. For crying out loud, he looks like he's made of silly putty. Ever seen THE STORY OF RICKY? Remember the monster the warden turns into? If so, then you already know essentially what Mr. Hyde in the movie looks like. Also, Jeckyll can see and hear Hyde who appears to him as sort of a mirror reflection.

And then there's Dorian Gray, the overtly gay character who tries to mask his homosexuality by constantly making suggestive quips directed at Mina. I swear Stewart Townsend didn't come across this gay in QUEEN OF THE DAMNED and Lestat was supposed to have homosexual tendencies. This character also wasn't in the comics.

Yes, I know I'm leaving out one more character but since he was just a ringer created by the producers I will just wait until the proper moment to discuss him.

So LXMP opens in London in 1899 when a tank-like machine comes barreling down the street running over everything in its way as it plows its way into and through the Bank of England. German soldiers pile out and open fire on the unfortunate constables who try to prevent the robbery. This mysterious figure called The Fantom, who looks like one of the mutant, inbred hillbillies from WRONG TURN made up to look like Destro from G.I. Joe and wearing Vin Diesel's XXX pimp coat, steps out of the tank and gets what he really came for, blueprints for the city of Venice.

Headlines abound claiming Germany robbed the Bank of England. Next thing you know Fantom and his group are blowing a Zeppelin hanger in Germany and kidnapping some scientists. Apparently all this is blamed on the British or something like that because Europe is supposedly now on the brink of war.

Africa 1899, a liaison for the Queen is sent down to Africa to try and recruit the Allan Quartermain. Let me say again that Sean Connery does an excellent job playing Sean Connery playing someone named Allan Quartermain who looks and acts just like Sean Connery does in every other movie he's in. Sean Connery, I mean Allan Quartermain wants nothing to do with any of this for reasons that will be explained later. Fortunately, The Fantom has sent some armor clad, retro machine gun-toting goons down to Africa as well. They just walk into this hotel and immediately begin blowing away every old white geezer in the building. Fortunately, Sean Connery despite being 127 years can still single handedly beat the crap out of a small army. He and the liaison chase the last surviving goon outside where the thug takes a cyanide capsule as any self-respecting Bond villain would. However, the goons left behind a brief case with a bomb in it and the building this whole sequence of events began in explodes behind them in a great big ball of fire.

Apparently producer Don Murphy is like that old rich Texan from ED WOOD who agreed to produce BRIDE OF THE MONSTER on the condition that the movie ends with a huge explosion. For some reason, every other action sequence in LXG ends with a massive, gargantuan, colossal explosion.

Quartermain now agrees to come to England and join this group and next thing you know its London 1899. Why they keep feeling compelled to tell us the year when its still the same year remains a mystery. Met by a chap going by the name of M, which is not only a not-so-sly homage to James Bond but also has a another meaning that will become clear later, he's taken into this library where he's shown files on The Fantom and immediately the bad jokes begin. And when I say bad jokes, I'm talking about puns that wouldn't even have been considered witty on the 1960's Batman series.

For example, Quartermain is shown a drawing of The Fantom and immediately quips, "The Fantom? How operatic." It's like they hired a 19th century version of the Unknown Comic to write some of these eye-rolling puns.

So here Quartermain is introduced to Captain Nemo and the Invisible Man, who applies make-up of some sort to his face to make himself visible. Am I the only one who thought Skinner with the make-up on his face and his choice of wardrobe spent most of the movie looking like POWDER dressed up as Indiana Jones?

Mina Harker then joins them and immediately Quartermain gives her a hard time because she's a lowly female. Seriously, does Sean Connery have some sort of clause in his contract that says every character he plays when first encountering the female lead of the movie must act like a misogynistic asshole? Every movie he seems to be like this. He's either trying to fuck'em or tell'em how inferior they are. What is up with Mr. Connery? The man has got some issues.

So they leave the library and head off to wherever they're going via Captain Nemo's state-of-the-art car, which is truly state-of-the-art considering cars don't exist yet. Well, except for Captain Nemo's. Nemo's car looks like a cross between a white Rolls Royce and the Batmobile. Nemo introduces everyone to his driver who tells everyone to "Call me Ishmael." Ugh.

In just one of the many confusing things to come, you're under the impression they are headed to the dock to get aboard Nemo's Nautilus but instead they end up going to Dorian Gray's house. Dorian wants nothing to do with the League until he sees Mina as apparently the two of them have history together. Other than it involving the two of them doing the horizontal mambo the movie never bothers to tell us anything else about this past relationship. Regardless, Dorian still isn't interested in joining the League. Then the Fantom shows up with his gang of hench goons. He's giving them the old "Join Me or Die!" ultimatum. Fortunately, one of his goons isn't a goon but actually a potential League member in disguise.

Then the action begins and the Fantom immediately runs away like a total punk bitch. Why they made the Fantom such a cowardly figure boggles the mind. In the ensuing battle everyone gets their chance to unveil their special skill. Quartermain is a great marksman, Skinner is, well, invisible, Captain Nemo does wire fu, Dorian Gray is immortal as injuring him only causes ashes to fall out of his body, and Mina is one of them fancy daywalkin' vampires. Either that or the screenwriters forgot about the whole "Daylight Bad!" aspect of vampirism. As I said, everyone gets a chance to show off their skills.

The new good guy soon reveals himself as American Special Agent Sawyer, as in Tom Sawyer. His special skill is that he's a hunky, young, blonde American male that was included by producer Don Murphy by because he was worried American audiences wouldn't go for an all-British superhero team and he was hoping his boyish good looks would bring in the teenage girls like Leonardo DiCaprio did for TITANIC. Hell, he even looks somewhat like Leo in TITANIC. Oh, Sawyer's also pretty handy with a Winchester rifle. Quartermain likes shiny rifles and when the young whippersnapper tells Grandpa Quartermain he brought two, Quartermain officially okays him for the group. Dorian Gray also decides to join the group since the previous excitement has made him all hot and horny.

So they're off to the docks where they hop aboard Nemo's ship, the Nautilus, which appears to be length of an aircraft carrier or at a luxury liner at the very least. I don't have a problem with the Nautilus being a big vessel but this seems a bit much. So they're going to Venice to prevent the Fantom from setting off explosives below the city that will cause the city to sink and in the process kill this secret tribunal of world leaders that are going to be meeting there at the time. Quartermain doesn't believe they can make it there in time but Nemo insists the Nautilus can. There's no denying that the scenes of the Nautilus jetting across the ocean are simply breathtaking and easily the best stuff in the movie.

Now despite the fact that they are supposed to be in a mad rush to get to Venice, they still have time to stop off in Paris to capture Mr. Hyde, who is first shown jumping across rooftops while wearing this ridiculously large top hat. There's a passing reference to Mr. Hyde actually being the gorilla from Edgar Allen Poe's MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE made by Quartermain as he and Sawyer lure the behemoth into a trap. Chained up yet still causing quite a ruckus on board the Nautilus, Mr. Hyde agrees to a deal in which he will be granted amnesty by the British gov't and allowed to return to his home country in exchange for aiding the League. This would also be a good time for him to transform back into Dr. Jeckyll and does so in an overly dramatic fashion.

So now the League has been assembled and they are off to Venice and a whole lot of stuff takes place that only goes to show just how poorly developed the characters and the plot are. Skinner, completely invisible, snoops about the vessel. Why? Who know? Mina and Quartermain spy Nemo practicing his religion and Mina warns Quartermain that Nemo worships the death god Kali and this is not a good thing. Why? Who knows? Some strange powder is discovered in front of the ships steering wheel at right about the time they realize someone has put them off course. Mina makes like Agent Scully and determines the powder to be flash powder from an old time camera. Then she and Dorian Gray start getting all hot and bothered again. Dr. Jeckyll spies on them and becomes even more sexually frustrated. Hyde appears in a reflection and begs the doc to let him out so he can make her a real woman.

But most nauseating of all are the pseudo father and son scenes between Quartermain and Sawyer. Quartermain is on deck skeet shooting with the Winchester rifle when Sawyer joins him. Soon Quartermain is recounting the story of how the last time he went on a mission for queen and country his son was killed in the process. So of course this mean we get to see some bonding scenes between the two as the legendary adventurer teaches the young whippersnapper how to be a crack shot from a long distance. Sawyer can't quite hit the target and the scene ends without him doing so thus guaranteeing that this particular skill will be something Sawyer has to successfully accomplish sometime during a critical moment in the movie's third act.

As bad as this whole sequence is, I still found it to be one of the most entertaining in the film due entirely to a rather glaring continuity oversight. A red balloon ball is launched into the air and then lands in the water. Quartermain and Sawyer take careful aim. In fact, Quartermain even tells him that it doesn't matter how long you take aiming as long as you make sure you hit the target so they usually take around 30 seconds before they fire at this target that supposed to be about 50 yards away. Uh huh. Well, whenever we see the Nautilus its hauling ass across the ocean at an incredibly high rate of speed for ship but when we see the scenes of the two on deck it looks as if the boat is lightly drifting. That ball would have been more than 50 yards away before it even hit the water. They even cutaway from them shooting at one point to show us a long shot of the Nautilus speeding towards Venice and all this does is accentuate the continuity error even more so. Don't get me wrong. I'm bitching about it or trying to nitpick. This is just the kind of continuity problem that puts a smile on my face.

Jeckyll also comes to discover that a bottle of his elixir is missing and immediately blames it on Skinner. Since Skinner is nowhere to be seen, literally, everyone aggress that he is the spy/mole/saboteur. However, since we have yet to be shown him actually doing any of this stuff it pretty much guarantees that he isn't the spy but just a red herring.

But there's no time to go hunt down the invisible sneak thief because they have arrived at Venice where the Nautilus makes like the Tri-Star Godzilla and magically shrinks itself so that it can fit inside the narrow canals of Venice, even under some of the arches. At one point a crew member tells Nemo, "We can't go any further," although I don't see why not since logistically they shouldn't have been able even get as far as they did. So this humongous ship comes down the canals of Venice stopping near this huge crowd of people who are having some sort of celebration and it must be one hell of a party because nobody ever turns around to say, "Hey, there's a humongous ship coming down the canals of Venice!"

Up until this point, I found LXG to be watchable but rather lifeless save for a few moments here and there. When they arrive at Venice the movie finally springs to life although it's life springs from being hopped up on goofballs. It's amazing how they pretty much butchered the comic book on which the material is based and experienced more than a few problems behind the scenes and still managed to make a movie that was entertaining in it's sheer ineptness. Of course, I don't think that's what anyone invovled with the movie had in mind. I'm sure it isn't what Alan Moore had in mind either. Stupidity, thy name is LXG!

As they begin unloading in order to search for and diffuse the bombs somewhere below the city, the bombs somewhere below the city detonate. Some mumbo jumbo is mumbled about the blast causing parts of the city to collapse in a domino effect so they can still save Venice, or at least most of it, if they get in front of the blast and destroy a building preventing the chain of destruction to continue. How exactly do they get in front of the path of destruction and detonate a building? By using Nemo's car, of course, which Nemo can track and fire a missile at.

So Tom Sawyer hops behind the wheel of Nemo's car and peels off accompanied by the co-star of HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING, La Vamp Nikita, and Lestat #2. Dr. Jeckyll stays behind because he's a total wuss unwilling to unleash his Mr. Hyde side and Nemo heads up to the Nautilus' crow's nest in order to track the car. Tom Sawyer drives like Speed Racer even though he should not know how to drive since cars don't exist yet besides Nemo's but there's no point nitpicking such things when you consider they are driving on the non-existent roadways of Venice. And just to complicate matters, the Fantom still has a small army of armed henchmen waiting in the wings and on rooftops waiting to ambush our heroes on what must be a suicide mission because the whole damn city is collapsing around them and they'd most likely die while shooting at this car that they couldn't possibly have known about. Dorian Gray hops out of the car to swordfight a couple of the disposable henchmen and then Mina goes batty, literally, as she flies into the air taking out some of the rooftop gunmen with her vampiric powers. Then Quartermain exits the car to chase after the Fantom, who has thus far been portrayed as such a coward I'm amazed he would even be willing to be there in person for the detonation. Sawyer switches from Speed Racer mode to Dukes of Hazzard mode as he jumps a gorge and crashes into a building in front of the collapsing carnage. Nemo orders the launch of a cruise missile, which does not exist yet, that is locked onto the car via a homing device, which also shouldn't exist yet, and blows up the car and the building in one of those enormous fireballs that producer Don Murphy must love as young Sawyer escapes the wreckage just in the nick of time. Thank God, I'd hate if something happend to such a wonderful character like young Agent Sawyer.

Granted anachronisms are central to the plot of LGX but frankly like there are so damn many of them that it almost seems to make the whole point of setting the movie in 1899 moot. At this rate they might as well have just set it in present times but with Victorian era heroes and villains running around fighting one another.

Quartermain and the Fantom have a cat and mouse game in a Venice graveyard where the Fantom gets his ass handed to him by the old fart and is then unmasked to reveal Old Man Smithers, the owner of the Haunted Amusement Park. Actually, its M, but M isn't really M anyway, but the movie still doesn't want to completely give away the villain's identity just yet. M scampers away like a coward yet again.

The League meets back in front of the Nautilus where they pat themselves on the back for saving 80% of Venice and Quartermain tells them of his encounter with the Fantom aka M. Inside the Nautilus, Dorian Gray reveals himself to be the true spy/mole/saboteur by shooting Ishmael and stealing this escape pod thingamajig. As Gray escapes, Nemo orders everyone into the Nautilus so they can chase the backstabbing fancy man with the homing device that's implanted in the escape pod thingamajig.

So the Nautilus is back at sea in hot pursuit of Gray when one of the ship hands brings this phonograph record he found that is addressed to the League. They play the record and on it are M and Dorian Gray revealing their secret cabal and what it's all about. Long story short, M made up the whole League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ruse to lure these super-powered individuals together so Dorian could collect (He did all this but I just didn't bother to specifically mention the convoluted details of how he did the first two) a skin sample from Skinner, a blood sample from Mina, photographs of Nemo's technology, and a bottle of Elixir from Dr. Jeckyll. Using these samples, they plan to reverse engineer their powers and sell the secrets to warring nations to help superpower their armies. They also plan to start a world war in order to sell their goods.

The phonograph recording also contains a hidden tone that is tuned to detonate several bombs on board the Nautilus, a fact the League figures out too little too late. The bombs go off creating huge balls of fire although they are the smallest explosions in the movie. While the Nautilus crew below deck recreate their favorite moments from TITANIC when it hits the iceberg, the League gets to recreate those wacky Star Trek moments when the shield's are low and they take a direct hit causing everybody to fall and tumble about the room. The Nautilus begins to submerge lifelessly to the bottom of the ocean with the only chance of survival being able to flip this massive latch in a now completely flooded compartment. Jeckyll and Hyde take this opportunity to reach a mutual understanding and decide to go from serial killer to superhero by transforming and turning the latch.

With repairs underway they vow to stop the villains once and for all but have no idea where they are because the homing device was damaged in the explosions. Fortunately, Skinner relays them a message that he knew everyone would think he was the spy so he decided to lay low and stow away on board the escape thingamajig. He sends them the coordinates to the villains ultimate lair somewhere in frozen Mongolia, I believe, which would seem an odd place unless you consider that the villain in the comic was Fu Manchu.

No, the villain in this movie is M aka Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime and Sherlock Holmes' arch nemesis. From the looks of how old Moriarty is, he must have been dueling with Sherlock Holmes when he was still in his mother's womb. It seems Moriarty got his hands on Dorian Gray's portrait, which is the source of his immortality, and will now return it to Dorian for a job well done. I suppose this could have been used as a means to make it seem as if Dorian Gray was actually be blackmailed into helping Moriarty but the movie has cast Dorian Gray as a bad guy and that's the way its going to remain.

So the villains arrive at the matte paintings of frozen Mongolia and find the matte painting of an abandoned village as well as yet another matte painting of an enormous fortress. So they take refuge in a nearby cave, surprisingly not a matte painting, until Skinner arrives to tell them of what he's seen. Moriarty has taken the locals captive for slave labor, is building state-of-the-art tanks and clunky, retro, nuts and bolts-looking, COMMANDER CODY-style robot soldiers, and reverse engineering the League's powers. He did not explain how he was able to skulk about the frozen tundra stark naked without getting either frostbite or catching a cold.

Now it's time for the film's final battle and it manages to be slightly more coherent than the Venice sequence but even more disjointed. I'd try to go into more details but it was all such a delirious blur. I hear Sean Connery helped oversee the editing of the movie in post-production after Stephen Norrington walked away from the project in disgust. If this is true then they should start putting a clause in all over Connery's contracts stating that he forbidden to go within 100 yards of any editing bays. I believe it all went down something like this:

• The League accompanied by Nemo's foot soldiers manage to get into Moriarty's fortress/factory by simply taking out two guards and walking right in. They quickly free the hostages.
  
• Mina heads to Dorian Gray's quarters and they do battle. He stabs her through the heart with his cane and proceeds to collect his things and then foolishly yanks the cane out allowing Mina to come back to life and impale him to the wall. She then forces him to look at his portrait, which is that of a skeletal Dorian Gray, and so he begins to decompose.
• Tom Sawyer ends up battling an evil, knife wielding invisible man as well as a flame-throwing robot that looks like a turn-of-the-century, nuts and bolts version of Hakaider. Skinner shows up to help him defeat the robot but gets badly burned in the process.
• Mr. Hyde beats up random bad guys until one of them drinks a whole beaker of his elixir causing the guy to transform into a 30-foot version of Mr. Hyde. Nemo attempts to help Hyde battle Vince McMahon's wet dream but they both find themselves overpowered and inside this small compartment with giant icicles falling from the ceiling while the raging muscle monster tries to get to them.
• Allan Quartermain engages Moriarty and they duke it out. Once again, Moriarty is no match for Indiana Jones' dad and runs off with a carry case containing the samples of the League's powers. Quartermain engages Moriarty again and has him defeated again when that evil invisible man shows up with a knife to Tom Sawyer's throat. Quartermain turns and shoots the invisible henchman dead but that gives Moriarty the opportunity to stab him in the back. Moriarty leaps out of the window and manages to fall seemingly 50-feet landing unscathed. As he takes off running to that escape pod thingamajig parked out in the distance, Sawyer picks up the Winchester rifle and takes aim. Hey, I told you that whole long distance shooting scene on the Nautilus was going to come into play. A mortally wounded Quartermain more or less advises Sawyer to use the force and after taking careful aim the gratuitous addition to the cast kills the movie's main villain with a single shot. Let that be a lesson to everyone. If you want something done right you need an American to do it! Quartermain compliments his young squire and then dies.
• I forget exactly when it happened but somewhere in here there was yet another tremendous explosion as the factory/fortress explodes in a series of big balls of fire. I know this killed the evil behemoth allowing Nemo and Hyde to escape and… It's all such a blur. There was definitely one final massive explosion.

The movie concludes at the African graveside service for the great Allan Quartermain as the League has gathered to pay their final respects including Skinner who while still invisible seems to have miraculously recovered from his burns that when we last saw him had him looking like Kevin Bacon at the end of HOLLOW MAN. The League decides to stick together to fight evil and walk away after Sawyer places a Winchester rifle on top of his grave where any kid could just come along, pick it up, and put someone's eye out.

Before I describe the movie's final moments I really should mention this blessing a witch doctor told Quartermain long ago about how "Africa will never let him die." This story about him saving a village and being blessed by a witch doctor is repeated several times throughout the movie. Well wouldn't you know it but there's a witch doctor now at Quartermain's grave. We get some funky dancing and chanting and then suddenly a bolt of lightning comes from the sky and strikes the Winchester rifle in what is clearly meant to convey that Africa won't let him die meaning he's going to rise from his grave for in time for the sequel. Fade to black.

It's a shame the movie is both a critical and box office dud because just as there is talk of possible Wolverine and Storm spin-off movies from X-MEN there's plenty they could do with spin-offs of the LXG characters. Captain Nemo could have his own film where he has to contend with a Godzilla-sized Moby Dick that is threatening to destroy New England. You could do a Tom Sawyer spin-off with Special Agent Sawyer as a turn-of-the-century XXX having to contend with his former partner and best friend turned rogue agent, Huck Finn. Just cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nigger Jim, who will be known simply as NJ, to act as his government liaison and you've got yourself an instant blockbuster. And just image for a moment all the potential box office gold that could be mined by having Sean Connery return to star in ZOMBIE ALLAN QUARTERMAIN & THE LOST CITY OF GOLD!

But it is just not to be. Oh well.

And that ladies and gentleman is THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, a prime example of how a Hollywood blockbuster can go horribly, horribly wrong when source material gets butchered and egos run amok. Still, I rather enjoyed it for the mess it was. LXG is by no means a good movie but you're either going to enjoy if for its badness or shake your head in disgust. In that way it's sort of like CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE only without being as self-aware of just how stupid it really is. And cheesy movies can make for a good time at the movies if you're into that sort of thing. Then again, if you're not then I rather doubt you would even be reading this right now.

Personally, I'm still waiting for SPEEDBALL: THE MOVIE.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY & I PAID TO SEE BLANKMAN