The Island of Dr. Moreau

Search Reviews · Now Playing · All Reviews

Starring	David Thewlis, Val Kilmer, Marlon Brando
Director	John Frankenheimer
Year	1996
What it's worth		Cable (If you're sick, stuck in front of the TV, and don't have much better to do with your time...)

The Island of Lost Souls is an excellent book written by H.G. Wells. So excellent, in fact, that this is the third movie to remake it. This Island of Dr. Moreau has all the atmosphere that the book can provide. The director eats up all the lighting and eerie sounds he can get, to create some really weird, goofy effects. Unfortunately, it falls into the worst - and hardest to avoid - trap in remaking stories; it tries to take too much of the book's plot, throw too much into the stew, and the film's story ends up a mishmash.

Marlon Brando plays Dr. Moreau, a Nobel prize winner who spouts strange platitudes, is allergic to the sun and so must wear heavy white makeup when he goes out, and encourages all his creations - animals spliced with human genes - to read poetry and shun meat. Kilmer is Montgomery, a crazed fellow who is hooked on drugs, was a brilliant neurosurgeon, and now helps deliver babies and give vaccinations to the half-humans on the island. Do you get the picture? I spent most of the movie wishing the editors had cut half the extra scenes and tidbits of information that got thrown in here and there, obscuring the story and leading you down a dozen rabbit trails on its way to the conclusion. And when the conclusion does hit, it's almost gone before you realize it.

Thewlis's Edward Douglas is the one who is supposed to be the normalizing force, the everyman foil who is our eyes and ears and brings home the central message of the movie. Unfortunately, he's an unlikeable fellow who spends the majority of the movie pining after Moreau's "daughter," a cat woman (Fairuza Balk) who looks surprisingly human for most of the movie. And that, sadly, becomes the central message of the film; the more human you look, the more human you must be. And if you look good, then you must be completely acceptable. Thewlis' unquestioning acceptance of the daughter, even while he degrades kind, tender souls around him as beastly creatures, was sadly disturbing. Did director Frankenheimer really mean to make to make Douglas so shallow, and the movie's message so repugnant?

Even most of the actors seem to be lost in a jungle of a story that matches its setting. Moreau is gracious and befuddled, and nary a hint comes through of the supposed genius involved. Most of the time, it's impossible to tell if Montgomery is high or just weird, or if there's even a difference. I give most of the credit to the people playing the "manimals," including Ron Perlman, the man who hid under makeup to play the Beast in the Beauty and the Beast TV show, and now hides again as the Sayer of the Law. He and Daniel Rigney, who plays Hyena Swine, the leader of the rebellion against Moreau, lend strange twists to their characters that make them something not quite like a civilized person.

So what we end up with is a film so rich in atmosphere and ideas that it never finds its way to coherency. It's a sad expense of talent and ideas for so few results. Check it out on cable sometime for curiosity's sake, and to enjoy some of the cinematography, but don't put down money for the show. It had most of our crowd shaking from laughter instead of from chills.

Search Reviews · Now Playing · All Reviews

More information about this movie is available at the Internet Movie database has about this movie.

In the Dark is created by Beth Ann Griese. In the Dark and the reviews on it are copyrighted; you may link to any portion of this site, but the contents cannot be copied without permission.