Around the World in 80 Days

Frank Coraci’s Around the World in 80 Days is a patchily enjoyable adventure that keeps making its own journey harder than it needs to be. Turning Jules Verne’s novel into a vehicle for Jackie Chan’s action and Steve Coogan’s dry comedy is a reasonable idea. The performers have different strengths, and watching them share a film gives us some pleasure. The trouble is the amount of business arranged around them: the travelling adventure, the stolen jade Buddha and the fights all compete for attention.

Steve Coogan is the main reason the comedy survives. His Phileas Fogg has a dry way of meeting the surrounding silliness that gives the jokes somewhere to land, without suggesting that the actor would rather be elsewhere. We laughed at his restraint alongside Jackie Chan’s physical exuberance; the difference between their approaches makes the pairing work. There is a useful generosity in both performances, with neither man needing to make the other look foolish simply to claim the scene.

Jackie Chan’s martial-arts passages supply the other reliable pleasure. His comic timing makes the fighting approachable even if choreographed combat is not usually the attraction, and the physical skill is worth watching in its own right. But a fight can be entertaining and still arrive when the story needs to get on with something else. Frank Coraci does not consistently make the action serve the adventure, so we find ourselves enjoying individual stretches while wishing the film would leave them behind.

The screenplay, credited to David Andrew Goldstein, David N. Titcher and David Benullo, gives the stolen jade Buddha too much weight. That extra strand ought to supply another reason to care about the trip; instead, it keeps dividing our attention just when the central partnership might sustain it. Tom Lewis’s editing cannot find a steady pace through these competing demands. At 120 minutes, the film has room for digressions, but too many of them feel like delays.

Phil Meheux’s cinematography makes the period locations inviting, and Perry Andelin Blake’s production design gives the film a welcome sense of somewhere to explore. Anna B. Sheppard’s costumes belong to that same appealing period presentation. There is pleasure in looking around these settings, which matters in an adventure that depends on the prospect of another destination. Trevor Jones’s score helps keep things cheerful, though it cannot supply the urgency that the storytelling lacks. Too often, the fights and gags take precedence over the places themselves.

For a comic adventure, this is oddly short of the pleasure of pressing on towards the next destination. We kept wishing the film would trust its leads with less distraction, because their company is sufficient reason to stay interested for a while. There are agreeable stretches, but they do not add up to a recommendation for the full two hours. If the attraction is Jackie Chan and Steve Coogan sharing a film, keep expectations at that scale.