L'Île mystérieuse

An adorably naive and visually solid adventure spectacle with the unmistakable signature of visual effects legend Ray Harryhausen. Simple techniques, rear projection, painted sets and animatronic puppets in the form of a giant crab, giant bees, some kind of ostrich-hen hybrid and a gigantic octopus, all of these are hallmarks of Harryhausen's work, which was unchanging, clear and impressive from The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms to Clash of the Titans. I haven't read Verne's novel “Mysterious Island”, so I can't judge to what extent they stuck to the source material, but it's a nice film packed with special effects. (24/09/2004)

It looks like there are quite a lot of tricks here, but in the end, unfortunately, there are actually very few of them, which is definitely a shame. Ray Harryhausen deserves maximum space thanks to his abilities, but the movie simplifies things quite a bit, which is a pity. It's a very American version of a classic Verne story. If it weren't for the stunning trick sequences, of which I expected much more, the movie is really not interesting in any way, which is incredibly unfortunate. (17/12/2013)

The opening with the flight in the balloon lured me, while the rest of the film was rather disappointing. True, thanks to Ray Harryhausen, everything in it is (literally) big - the crab, the bees... But this time it wasn't enough for me. I was looking forward to Verne's story, which I know from the book, and the filmmakers literally forgot about it. Not even Herbert Lom as Captain Nemo could save the day. Four stars for the special effects, but two and a half stars for everything together. (09/07/2011)