The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

There ought to be some pleasure in putting Captain Nemo, Mina Harker and Dorian Gray in one adventure and letting them get on one another’s nerves. Stephen Norrington’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen makes surprisingly little of the opportunity. It is a poor, muddled action fantasy, with an appealing company of literary characters and too little time spent making them interesting together. The production design and several supporting performances deserve a better film.

Sean Connery plays Allan Quatermain with enough charm to explain why the film keeps returning to him. He can hold our attention without much assistance from the story, which is useful here. But the decision to make him so dominant leaves an ensemble adventure feeling cramped, with everyone else competing for whatever attention remains. A central performance can help a crowded film find its way; this one is asked to compensate for characters who have barely been introduced.

Peta Wilson’s Mina Harker is one of the stronger reasons to stay, and Jason Flemyng is also worth watching. Both find something playable in characters whom James Robinson’s screenplay introduces too hastily. With Captain Nemo, Tom Sawyer and Dorian Gray also competing for attention, the script has more people than it knows how to use. Their introductions establish who has arrived without giving enough sense of why these particular people belong in a story together.

Carol Spier’s production design is the clearest success, giving the surroundings an interest that the plot seldom matches. There is care here, and enough visual invention to make us wish the characters had something less routine to do. Dan Laustsen’s cinematography helps establish that appeal, although attractive images cannot make an overcrowded adventure coherent. The effects are less persuasive, and their shortcomings become harder to overlook alongside the more accomplished design work.

Paul Rubell’s editing makes the action particularly difficult to enjoy. We were bored by the fights. Too often, the cutting left us unable to tell where the characters were in relation to one another, so we stopped trying to follow their movements. This is a substantial failure in a film whose chief attraction should be seeing these unusual people put their abilities to use. Without that basic sense of position, more activity merely prolongs the confusion.

Trevor Jones supplies the score, but the music cannot make these confrontations matter when the writing has done so little to establish the people involved. The villain is weakly drawn, and the principal characters remain too thin for their danger to feel urgent. As the plotting becomes busier, the film gives us little reason to become more involved. Across 110 minutes, even the novelty of watching this company in action becomes wearing.

These literary characters need not be treated reverently, and a fantasy adventure has no obligation to behave like a reading group. It does need to let us enjoy their company for longer than it takes to recognise their names. We would happily accept a foolish plot if the companions were entertaining enough to carry it. Choose this only if Captain Nemo and Mina Harker sharing a cast list is already half the attraction.