You know those movies that are so bad they're good? I love those types of movies. I have a not so secret love affair with the Fantastic Four movie and Battlefield Earth. The only problem is that LXG is not one of these movies. It's a movie that is so bad, it's just bad. In other words, it's just not campy, it's closer to just crappy.
I probably wouldn't judge the film so harshly if it weren't adapted from such a great source material. But for some reason what Alan Moore could pull off in comic form, the filmmakers just can't pull off in movie form. Moore's hidden references are as subtle as a Sphinx while so many of the lines in the movie are so aware of themselves you can't help but groan.
For some reason that I can't fathom, they went farther away from the storyline of the comic than was necessary. In the comic, the villain they fight is Fu Man Chu while Professor Moriarty posing as M is manipulating them. In the movie they fight the Phantom of the Opera who is really M who is really Professor Moriarty. I'm still scratching my head over why they replaced the villain with a far worse one and why they made Moriarty into a needlessly complex character to follow.
Also gone are the opium addicted Alan Quartermain and the leader Mina Murray (the film's version retains her married name of Harker... actually, considering how much the trailers made her look like a pointless sex object, she was alright but not nearly as empowered as she was in the comic). To make up for this they've added the presence of Dorian Gray (actually, a fitting addition to the League) and Tom Sawyer. I know that they probably added Tom Sawyer so that American audiences would better like the film but the problem is that this is not is his era. His character would be closer to fifty or so at the turn of the century and not in his twenties.
Despite some of my complaining, the movie wasn't all bad. It did have some horrible movie clichés in it but it also did have some good moments, some decent fight scenes (well, two of them anyway) and I must say that I really enjoyed the way the filmmakers portrayed the Jeykll/Hyde relationship.
So, the final Jeopardy question: is the film worth seeing? It's worth seeing a matinee of once in the theatre, yeah. If for no other reason, it lets you appreciate the brilliance of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. For this is what the comic might've read like if it hadn't been for two such geniuses at the helm.
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