Movie Review for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The

Summary: Allan Quatermain, the world’s greatest adventurer, leads a legion of superheroes the likes of which the world has never seen.Quatermain’s extraordinary League is comprised of Captain Nemo, Dracula vampiress Mina Harker, an invisible man Rodney Skinner, American secret service agent Sawyer, Dorian Gray, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and M--the League’s enigmatic recruiter.The League members are staunch individualists, outcasts in fact, with checkered pasts and singular gifts that have been both blessing and curse. Now they must learn to trust each other and work as a team for the very hope of civilization. With little preparation and no time to lose, they will be transported via Captain Nemo’s extraordinary submarine, the Nautilus, to the frontline of defense: Venice, Italy. There, a masked madman known as the Fantom plans to sabotage a conference of world leaders by setting off a domino chain of explosions, sinking the entire city. The threat is catastrophic, the risks are staggering. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has 96 hours to save the world.

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By Mike McGranaghan of Aisle Seat (7/0)
            While the gentlemen are extraordinary, the plot is anything but.

By Jamie Russell of BBC (7/0)
            Destined to go down in the history books as the Heaven's Gate of superhero flicks, this is nothin...

By Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times (7/0)
            Just when it seems about to become a real corker of an adventure movie, [the movie] plunges into ...

By Michael Wilmington of Chicago Tribune (7/0)
            Watching this outrageously vapid and overdone movie is a sad experience, because Connery, at 73, ...

By Margaret A. McGurk of Cincinnati Enquirer (7/0)
            ...scores a Bad Cinema trifecta - ugly, boring AND stupid.

By Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid (7/0)
            [The filmmakers] assume that we viewers have absolutely no knowledge of these characters whatsoev...

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By David Levine of E! Online (7/0)
            For a film with a promising premise, it's shocking that it fizzles by reel two.

By David Foucher of EDGE Boston (7/0)
            Let’s end the suspense, shall we? This Sean Connery vehicle is not the summer blockbuster we hope...

By Erik Childress of eFilmCritic.com (7/0)
            It’s loud, alternately garish and boorish and is going to hack off literary connoisseurs, comic b...

By Scott Weinberg of eFilmCritic.com (7/0)
            It's fairly tough to enjoy popcorn entertainment when the words "WHY ARE THEY...?" and "WHAT THE ...

By Eric D. Snider of EricDSnider.com (7/0)
            Anemic and forgettable, but not entirely unlikable.

By Jake Euker of F5 (Wichita, KS) (7/0)
            If you stripped this film of its effects, not even the platform would remain. Unplug the computer...

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By Daniel Eagan of Film Journal International (7/0)
            So little of real consequence is at stake that you'll have plenty of time to notice how the names...

By Stephen Himes of Film Snobs (7/0)
            Would have been much better with Darrell Hammond as Quatermain.

By Kevin Carr of Film Threat (7/0)
            The problem with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the filmmakers tried to give everyone a...

By David Levine of filmcritic.com (7/0)
            For those of us expecting a smart action film where knowledge of these characters would broaden o...

By Victoria Alexander of FilmsInReview.com (7/0)
            Connery chews the scenery, beats up everybody in sight, and tries to bully his co-stars into acti...

By Todd Gilchrist of FilmStew.com (7/0)
            With such strident resistance to hyperbolic, risk-taking absurdity, such a film can hardly ever a...

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By Rob Vaux of Flipside Movie Emporium (7/0)
            The subject matter of LXG demands an intelligent approach... You simply can't marry such a litera...

By Ross Anthony of Hollywood Report Card (7/0)
            Weak climax, but overall, the film is quite enjoyable, never too serious about itself, always in ...

By Kirk Honeycutt of Hollywood Reporter (7/0)
            ...nothing anchors the lighter-than-air story as it drifts...into an FX stratosphere where wit, c...

By Bob Bloom of Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN) (7/0)
            [An] old-fashioned, Saturday matinee fun spotlighting larger-than-life heroes, a masked mystery v...

By James Sanford of Kalamazoo Gazette (7/0)
            swings freely between overwrought psychodrama and overblown fantasy ...The effects here often loo...

By Steve Crum of Kansas City Kansan (7/0)
            Just don't think too much between the super battles. This is, after all, very comic book.

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By Andrea Chase of Killer Movie Reviews (7/0)
            by turns tedious or cheesy or, for unendurably long swaths of time, both.

By Carol Cling of Las Vegas Review-Journal (7/0)
            Strands its characters in a series of elaborate but by-the-numbers action sequences that prove sh...

By Manohla Dargis of Los Angeles Times (7/0)
            These guys have dumbed down a comic book.

By Martin Scribbs of Low IQ Canadian (7/0)
            No, no, no, and, a thousand times, no.

By Mark Dujsik of Mark Reviews Movies (7/0)
            I would probably intensely dislike The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen if not for the fact that...

By Kevin A. Ranson of MovieCrypt.com (7/0)
            ... with few exceptions, the cast is excellent but the story is terrible... "League" still isn't ...

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By Jorge Avila Andrade of Moviola (7/0)
            'Tiene varios defectos pero se puede disfrutar como cualquier matinée dominguera. Esa es su funci...

By John Anderson of Newsday (7/0)
            The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen may end up being the film that defined the season: underwri...

By Jim Chastain of Norman Transcript (7/0)
            have we descended so far in American filmmaking that we must now literally scrape the bottom of t...

By Ethan Alter of NYC Film Critic (7/0)
            The League is a project that was doomed from the moment the studio threw out Alan Moore comic and...

By Linda Cook of Quad City Times (Davenport, IA) (7/0)
            An extraordinary mess.

By David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews (7/0)
            [The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is] a lot of fun, with its unique cast of characters and i...

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By Sarah Chauncey of Reel.com (7/0)
            Whether League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is true to the comics upon which it's based, I can't sa...

By Robin Clifford of Reeling Reviews (7/0)
            The end of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” provides ample material for a sequel. Too bad ...

By James Berardinelli of ReelViews (7/0)
            The experience of watching this movie is a marginal and moderately disappointing one.

By Jack Garner of Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (7/0)
            An entertaining special-effects action extravaganza based on an amusing premise

By Joe Baltake of Sacramento Bee (7/0)
            Most studios aim for movies, particularly summer movies, that can be enjoyed by both kids and the...

By Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle (7/0)
            So long as the camera is within range of Connery's steady gaze and faintly sardonic smile, all is...

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By William Arnold of Seattle Post-Intelligencer (7/0)
            ...one more bloated effects-o-rama lumbering through a formula plot...without much zest, imaginat...

By Jeremiah Kipp of Slant Magazine (7/0)
            An accumulation of shoot-outs, explosions, quips and CGI special effects assembled into a semi-co...

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat of Spirituality and Practice (7/0)
            The finest moments are when the nineteenth century literary superheroes demonstrate their unique ...

By Rob Blackwelder of SPLICEDWire (7/0)
            Summer-movie-ized for the Cliff's Notes set, predictably packed with flash and completely devoid ...

By Shannon J. Harvey of Sunday Times (Australia) (7/0)
            . As a more popular 19th-century author, Robert Frost, said: "Poetry is what is lost in translati...

By Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone of TheMovieChicks.com (7/0)
            The characters are so lifeless the only sparks we could see were the glow of illuminated watches ...

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By Scott Nash of Three Movie Buffs (7/0)
            Takes a very promising idea and executes its so poorly that all of the joy is drained completely ...

By Derek Adams of Time Out (7/0)
            ... the effects and sets are marvellously fantastical and there are one or two neat comical allus...

By Audrey Rock-Richardson of Tooele Transcript-Bulletin (Utah) (7/0)
            Watching LXG is a lot like looking at a set of bad one-hour photos. Blurry, streaked, dark, and ...

By Mike Clark of USA Today (7/0)
            ...so boring that the mind floats to extraneous matters...

By John Beifuss of Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) (3/5) Login Required (Login Required)
            It could be introduced as Exhibit A in the case against digital effects technology...

By Elvis Mitchell of New York Times (3/5) Login Required (Login Required)
            ...has the sweat stains of wasted energy; it's dreary, yet frantic.

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By Eleanor Ringel Gillespie of Atlanta Journal-Constitution (3/4) No reference
            These gentlemen -- and this lady -- are extraordinary indeed.

By Rob Thomas of Capital Times (Madison, WI) (3/4) No reference
            When placed next to other recent comic-book movies like "Spider-Man" or the "X-Men" films, it see...

By Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times (3/4) No reference
            ...just when it seems about to become a real corker of an adventure movie, [the film] plunges int...

By Pablo Villaca of Cinema em Cena (3/4) No reference
            Quem não leu o trabalho de Moore e O’Neill vai gostar do filme? Acredito que não, já que o péssim...

By Robert Denerstein of Denver Rocky Mountain News (3/4) No reference
            A dreary and disheveled adventure that qualifies as one of summer's bigger disappointments.

By Walter Chaw of Film Freak Central (3/4) No reference
            When you get this close to the absolute nadir of cinema, subtle measures of relative merit just d...

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By MaryAnn Johanson of Flick Filosopher (3/4) No reference
            It grows into its suckiness -- it's not sure what to do with it at first, and then it gets comfor...

By Donald Munro of Fresno Bee (3/4) No reference
            With its lumbering, geriatric feel and turn-of-the-last-century fussiness, this League plays out ...

By Liz Braun of Jam! Movies (3/4) No reference
            The writing is terrible. There is no tension, no mystery, no excitement, no adventure.

By Louis B. Hobson of Jam! Movies (3/4) No reference
            Because it successfully marries great literary classics with contemporary comic books, The League...

By John Patterson of L.A. Weekly (3/4) No reference
            Norrington falls repeatedly into predictable fight sequences and apocalyptic explosions, drowning...

By Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly (3/4) No reference
            Robinson and Norrington approach literature like lazy high schoolers in an English class, using ...

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By Bob Strauss of Los Angeles Daily News (3/4) No reference
            When one of the main triumphs of your overproduced action movie is an ensemble member's enunciati...

By Colin Covert of Minneapolis Star Tribune (3/4) No reference
            A wonderfully old-school adventure.

By Megan Lehmann of New York Post (3/4) No reference
            ...unfathomable balderdash...

By Jay Boyar of Orlando Sentinel (3/4) No reference
            Works wonderfully as a popcorn picture.

By Louis-Jérôme Cloutier of Panorama (3/4) No reference
            Quelques moments sont légèrement mieux et même intéressants, mais dans l’ensemble, vous allez com...

By James Berardinelli of ReelViews (3/4) No reference
            ...as clever as the conceit may be, it can't hide a mundane storyline...

                         Reviews of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
By Peter Travers of Rolling Stone (3/4) No reference
            ...League did prove extraordinary in its rank ineptitude...

By Beth Wood of San Diego Union-Tribune (3/4) No reference
            Packed with special effects and loaded down with mostly lame attempts at literary witticism.

By Chris Hewitt (St. Paul) of St. Paul Pioneer Press (3/4) No reference
            A triumph of art direction.

By Paul Povse of State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL) (3/4) No reference
            The movie is extraordinary mostly for the sheer wastefulness of it all, the work of little boys w...

By Paul Arendt of Teletext (3/4) No reference
            'A welter of shoddy action setpieces and infuriatingly patronising dialogue.'

By Eleanor Ringel Gillespie of Atlanta Journal-Constitution (3/4) Not Reachable
            ...a lightning-paced period adventure, dotted with some off-hand literary references to coax a sm...

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20th Century Fox