Astound the world in any way

Noel Vera

Orson Welles' 1946 production of "Around the World in 80 Days" was,
according to legend, something to behold, a stage extravaganza that
involved a cast of over a hundred actors, singers, and dancers, plus
fifty stagehands operating changes between scenes, of which there
were twenty in Act 1, fourteen in Act 2. There were snake charmers,
medicine men, Arab spies and sinister Chinese; there was an entire
circus act, complete with aerialists, jugglers, contortionists, and
clowns; there were scenes in train stations, jungles, pagodas, jail
cells; there were even sections that were filmed beforehand then
projected onstage, presumably to show us things that would have been
impossible to fit into the theater (the inside of the Bank of
England, a storm at sea), and to move matters along faster. And
unlike other incarnations of the Jules Verne story Welles'
production was (as if the challenge of mounting so huge a project
wasn't difficult enough) a musical, with music and lyrics by Cole
Porter (maybe not his best, but still…).

Welles' production was so stuffed full of wonders and extravaganzas
one newspaper wag wondered why he didn't include the proverbial
kitchen sink; come next performance, Welles trotted onstage carrying
a sink. Fans (one of whom was Bertolt Brecht) still talk fondly of
it to this day.

Michael Todd, who helped finance Welles' production (he pulled his
money out after an argument about costs), went on to produce his one
and only film, a three-hour screen version of "Around the World"
that put his impressive 70 mm Todd AO widescreen process to fairly
good use in capturing the varied landscapes. Todd also invented for
the picture the term "cameo," where big stars appeared in small
roles, lending the movie some of their celebrity status--without
paying them celebrity-sized salaries.

That kind of showmanship probably looks dated to audiences today,
brought up on a diet of hobbit movies stuffed to the gills with CGI
effects. Actually, watching Todd's "Around the World" again, it's
strange what still works and what doesn't--you get no tingle from
all the exotic locales and characters, not when flying across Asia
and Europe takes only a day now, most cities have their Indian and
Chinese immigrant communities, and it's all viewable in the
Discovery Channel anyway; also, the implicit supremacy of the white
male European hero in any situation or setting tends towards the
irritating, even if it is the likeable David Niven playing the lead
role. It doesn't help that the director (Michael Anderson) was
probably hired to take Todd's orders without too much fuss--he has
all the visual style and flash of a coloring book illustrator.

But Todd probably knew (or believed in) the impact his Todd AO, his
thirty-five celebrity cameos, and his colorful, Verne-inspired plot
(for insurance he hired S.J. Perelman to polish the dialogue) would
have, and he was right. The movie was a hit and went on to win the
1957 Academy Award for Best Picture--proving once again that, yes,
you can snow Academy voters if you thought big enough, used enough
razzle-dazzle, and avoided any plotline more complicated than a love
story (James Cameron probably took his cue from Todd in
making "Titanic").

Which brings us to Jackie Chan, who, with the help of Disney, has
decided to serve up his own version of the Verne story. This "Around
the World in 80 Days" isn't three hours long (suicidal, considering
how short audiences' attention spans have become), doesn't have much
in the way of scintillating dialogue (Perelman was apparently
unavailable), and director Frank Coraci (whose previous experience
was directing Adam Sandler movies) makes Michael Anderson look like
John Ford. And it may be just me, but Arnold Schwarzenegger, Owen
and Luke Wilson, Rob Schneider, John Cleese and Kathy Bates just do
not have the same level of celebrity glitter (well, maybe Cleese and
Bates) as the likes of Noel Coward, John Gielgud, Cedric Hardwicke,
Trevor Howard, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, Marlene Dietrich, Charles
Boyer, Buster Keaton, Joe E. Brown, George Raft, Red Skelton, Victor
Mclaglen, John Carradine, Shirley Mclaine, and Frank Sinatra, just
to name a few…

Still, it's basically a Jackie Chan movie set in a Jules Verne
world, and while I personally think the concept--that it's second-
banana Passepartout and not white European Phileas Fogg who's the
hero--is brilliant, and would make perhaps the best version of
Verne's story ever in the hands of the right writer and director
(Robert Towne and Tsui Hark? Michael Chabon and Yuen Woo Ping?),
what is onscreen is engaging enough. Todd's "Around the World"
entertained us with exotic locales and the occasional Hollywood
star; Chan's "Around the World" entertains us with various assassins
having a go at Chan, who fights them off with tables, chairs, paint
cans, whatever. It's a concept worthy of Monty Python (I wish they
let Cleese have a crack at the script), if only they had the courage
and imagination to go all the way with the absurdity…

Steve Coogan as Fogg is disappointingly wan where he was deadpan
hilarious in Michael Winterbottom's "24 Hour Party People" (I
suppose it's the material); Cecil de France makes for a fetching
female ingénue; Jim Broadbent brings much-needed scenery-chewing to
his role as the villainous Lord Kelvin. Chan as the more heroic,
more athletic, but still self-effacing Passepartout isn't young any
more, and can't do the hair-raising, bone-cracking stunts he used to
do in the "Police Story" and "Project A" movies; nowadays he's
content to let story, comedy and production values do more of the
work for him (not that he's cruising here; for a movie essentially
about forward motion, he moves the fastest, and in all directions).

Of the cameos, the Wilson brothers have a relaxed Californian charm
while Rob Schneider still tries way too hard; the governor of
California is often cited as a comic high point, grotesque smile and
all, but I found his lumpy presence grating, especially when there's
the suggestion (however softpedaled) that he's going to force
himself on a woman--it's like a confirmation of every creepy and
unpleasant thought you've had about him. My own favorites would be
the wonderful Karen Mok as General Fang, and the incomparable Sammo
Hung showing his martial arts chops as Chinese folklore hero Wong
Fei Hung, one of Chan's character's fellow Ten Tigers (a slip--it
was Wong's father who was a member of the original Ten Tigers).
Always nice to see them again--Mok, Hung, Wong, the Tigers--and it's
a pleasure to think Chan and Hung thought well enough of their
audience to slip their little joke in there somewhere, in the hopes
that someone would spot it. Overall, not exactly top-rate
entertainment, but not a total embarrassment when set beside the
earlier, Oscar-winning version. I still wish I could have seen the
Welles production, though.

(First published in Businessworld, 7/16/04)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)