Around the World in 80 Days Movie Review

Around the World in 80 Days is the best `70s movie Disney ever made in addition to being the best Jackie Chan movie since Rush Hour (yes, I defend Rush Hour).

Though it starts out poorly the film builds a sense of camaraderie and creates an escalating sense of merriment, erasing the memories of its blocky start.

80 Days is freely adapted from the Jules Verne novel and, more accurately, the 1956 film version that Michael Todd Weinsteined to Best Picture over Giant and The Ten Commandments. The basic structure is the same as Phileas Fogg (Steve Coogan) and his assistant Passepartout (Jackie Chan) attempt to win a bet by racing around the world in 80 days. One of the new complications is a stolen Jade Buddha, a totem of Passepartout's village in China (one of the eventual stops along the way, of course), that Passepartout swiped from the Bank of England to return to his people. Some evil warlords and a UK accomplice, Lord Kelvin (Jim Broadbent, being broad) are trying to stop them as is an accident-prone constable, Inspector Fix (Ewen Bremner).

Our heroes' first stop is France where they crash through a salon, disturbing the incredibly mediocre work of Monique LaRoche (Cecile De France, more of her please). She joins the two as they switch to using a hot air balloon and head to Turkey, where Monique almost becomes the seventh wife of Prince Hapi (a giddy, nearly dopey Arnold Schwarzenegger). They later also run into several other personalities, a San Francisco derelict (played by Rob Schneider), Queen Victoria (Kathy Bates) and Orville and Wilbur Wright (Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson, respectively).

Much like the Wright brother's famous flight 80 Days does catch some air and one can't help feeling that if more people had pitched in with the cameos (the '56 version was surfeited with them) that the film would have achieved an even greater lift. The choice to use some cartoon-ish computer graphics to illustrate the trip (as well as many of the modes of transportation) must be intentional (or this film really ran out of money) because they are so garish and whimsical they seem to come from a straight-to-video children's movie.

Coogan continues to be an interesting actor and well worth watching. He comes out of this without a scratch and somehow fits into that nether-world of leading man and leading mensch. He's comic without being particularly funny and portrays bravery without being particularly courageous. This probably won't be a compliment to him but he reminded me of Roddy McDowall.

It's unexpected but Chan, who was an executive producer on this, keeps his mugging to a minimum, and one has to give credit where credit is due to director Frank Coraci (The Waterboy, The Wedding Singer--hey Adam Sandler, you couldn't carve out two days for the guy that gave you two of your biggest hits?).

Also a pleasant surprise is the film's family-friendly nature. There's no cussing, no innuendo, no true scary scenes. In short, because expectations for this film were so incredibly low Around the World in 80 Days is one of the most pleasant surprises of the summer.