|
New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search
Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The
The 20th Century Fox Film Corporation
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for intense sequences of fantasy violence, language and innuendo
Starring
Sean Connery,
Naseeruddin Shah,
Peta Wilson,
Tony Curran,
Stuart Townsend,
Shane West,
Jason Flemyng,
and
Richard Roxburgh
Incredible technology wielded by a mind of infinite evil is threatening the safety of the entire world. To fight the unthinkable, the British government will have to mobilize the extraordinary. This team -- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen -- is the only thing standing between the future and total destruction. (20th Century Fox)
| GENRE(S): |
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Alan Moore (comic books)
Kevin O'Neill (comic books)
James Robinson
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Stephen Norrington
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: December 16, 2003
Video: December 16, 2003
Theatrical: July 11, 2003
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
108 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA / Germany |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
80
Wall Street Journal
Collin Levey
Succeeds the same way the original comic books did: by making the conflicts and dilemmas basic enough for a five-year-old, while giving the heroes and villains glamorous outfits and layers of complexity, to thicken the broth.
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
The concept is high but everything else is merely fair to middling, one more or less watchable B-movie in megabucks clothing.
63
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
In a summer of high-octane action and testosterone-boosted thrills, this movie is out of its league.
60
Film Threat
Kevin Carr
The filmmakers tried to give everyone a main storyline and ended up diluting everything. With so many characters, the film lost some focus.
60
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Robinson's script is alive to the material's literary roots, although there is a sense that the brakes have been applied so as not to push into territory perceived as too esoteric for American teenagers.
50
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Here, finally, is a superhero movie your AP English teacher can enjoy.
50
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
It depicts the world of a century ago in a way that comments on the anxieties facing the world today, and it does so, at least for a while, with cleverness and a sense of fun.
42
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
One more bloated effects-o-rama lumbering through a formula plot (super-villain out to rule the world) without much zest, imagination or awareness of its own absurdity.
42
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The movie is based on a 1999 series of comic books by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, but the original tone of deadpan historical audacity has been replaced by a kind of wax-museum literalness.
42
Portland Oregonian
Kim Morgan
The film wears out its welcome by the halfway mark, becoming a silly spectacle.
40
Los Angeles Times
Manohla Dargis
These guys have dumbed down a comic book.
40
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
League begins as a smart variation on the summer blockbuster, then loses its nerve in a second half sure to satisfy neither cheap-thrill-seekers nor fans of neglected literary oddities.
40
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
Has the sweat stains of wasted energy; it's dreary, yet frantic.
40
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Simply put, it’s too much of a good thing, this unreined tumult of chaos.
40
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
Moore invested his characters with flaws, with a tangible humanity; God knows they never felt the need to explain themselves, as the film does, rendering it something akin to one long footnote.
40
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
The irony of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is that it has the most literate pedigree of any action movie you're likely to see this year or next -- and it's been made by people who seem to have no sense of how to tell a story.
38
Premiere
Peter Debruge
Despite its preposterous leaps of logic, it somehow still emerges a reasonably entertaining summer blockbuster.
38
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
How does an embarrassment of riches turn into mere embarrassment?
38
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Outrageously vapid and overdone movie.
38
USA Today
Mike Clark
The murkiest-looking movie since Ben Affleck's “Daredevil” and about as lacking in charm.
38
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
What a riveting movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen might have been! And what a rickety mess it turned out to be when the people responsible lost faith in the origin of the material!
38
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Having these characters interact is both the joke and raison d'etre of "League." Its story is beyond banal.
38
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Has the distinction of being much dumber and pulpier than the comic book on which it's based -- the ink practically comes off on your fingers as you watch it.
30
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Nothing anchors the lighter-than-air story as it drifts away under the direction of Stephen Norrington ("Blade") into an FX stratosphere where wit, character and vigorous storytelling cease to matter.
30
Slate
David Edelstein
And you wait--and wait--for the magic of movies.
30
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
It just doesn't work...This isn't a blend of modern and classic so much as a collision.
25
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Opium- addicted Allan Quatermain becomes none other than Sean Connery. At least he gives a real movie-star performance, which is more than the other gentlemen manage. Extraordinary? Balderdash!
25
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Except for Connery, who is every inch the lion in winter, nothing here feels authentic.
25
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Just when it seems about to become a real corker of an adventure movie, plunges into incomprehensible action, idiotic dialogue, inexplicable motivations, causes without effects, effects without causes, and general lunacy. What a mess.
20
LA Weekly
John Patterson
Extraordinary is the very last adjective that comes to mind.
20
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
Bloated and incoherent.
20
Village Voice
Ed Park
Even if, per Wilde, all art is quite useless, it need not be quite as useless as this.
20
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
A stiff. I don't know the comic book series, but it could hardly be as lifeless as this leaden adaptation, in which the weapons have more personality than the characters and the nonstop action often feels like no action at all.
12
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Six guys and a gal who flatline on arrival. Easily the lamest action-adventure fantasy since “Wild Wild West.”
12
New York Post
Megan Lehmann
Unfathomable balderdash.
10
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
It's not brazenly bad or heroically bad or stridently bad. It's bad in all the old, dull ways of being bad: poor performances, absurd story, dreary special effects, witless dialogue and the excessive length of someone taking himself far too seriously.
 The average user rating for this movie is 4.4 (out of 10) based on 76 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Read more user comments...
Discuss this movie in our forums |
|
