Tarzan and the Lost City (1998)
Director: Carl Schenkel Cast: Casper Van Dien, Jane March, Steve Waddington Screenplay: Bayard Johnson, J. Anderson Black Producers: Stanley S. Canter, Dieter Geissler, Michael Lake Runtime: 83 min. US Distribution: Columbia Tristar Rated PG: mild violence
By Nathaniel R. Atcheson (nate@pyramid.net)
There are many films about that great jungle guy Tarzan, but I've only seen a couple of them. I've been subjected to Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932) with Johnny Weissmuller, which is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of the series. Although considered a classic by some, I found it to be an intensely dull film on every level. The other that I've seen is Greystoke (1984), with Christopher Lambert as Tarzan and Ian Holm as his friend. That film I enjoyed very much; it's well-made, well-acted, and seemed to update the very dated concept competently.
Now, in 1998, we are given Tarzan and the Lost City, staring Casper Van Dien (of Starship Troopers) as the man in the title. It's much more like the 1932 film, although far worse in every way. This is a profoundly boring cinematic experience. Not only is it boring--it's a terrible film. It's poorly acted, terribly written, ornamented in sloppy special effects, and a shameless Indiana Jones rip-off. Even the sets and locations, which should be vast and exciting, are dull and perfunctory. I'm not a fan of Tarzan to begin with, but I can appreciate a good film about him. Tarzan and the Lost City had me looking at my watch every five minutes.
I've thought long and hard about how to synopsize the story, but the "story" of this 83-minute feature is so thin that I find it vastly difficult to do so. Van Dien, as I mentioned, plays Tarzan. We are not introduced to him as a character--he simply appears in an early scene, dressed in a tuxedo, apparently having already passed the humanizing phase that I thought was present in all Tarzan films.
The next scene has him telling Jane (Jane March) that he needs to go to Africa to stop somebody bad. Jane is also given no real introduction; when we first see her, it's like we're already supposed to know who she is and what she's like. This is a major flaw: this film, since it's not an official sequel or continuation of any story, should start from scratch and introduce characters--especially the main characters--in a formal way. Since it doesn't, the characters are never explained or developed, and there's nothing to care about.
Well, they get to Africa, and Tarzan quickly takes off his clothes to be a jungle guy. It turns out that he's there to stop a mad fortune seeker named Nigel Ravens (Steven Waddington), who's butchering African tribes in his trek to find the Lost City described in the title. What's in the Lost City? Who knows. Why does he want to go there? Don't bother asking. Even the climactic scene provides nothing but a light show (and a poorly-animated one, at that), and never do we hear a single coherent explanation of what the freakin' heck this piece of twaddle is about. The film even uses magic in a few scenes to solve problems (Tarzan gets bitten by a poisonous snake, and is saved my magical bees), and where this magic comes from or what it is remains a mystery at the end of the film.
Did I mention the film is boring? The direction by Carl Schenkel is without even a hint of style to make it interesting, and a dry action film is never good. There's not a single clever shot in the entire film, and there's not a scene to be found that is interesting, exciting, funny, or charming. There are a lot of moments featuring tribesmen dancing, and none of this is new. When they finally reach the Lost City, it's just a big map painting of a pyramid. I was expecting to be enthralled in the visual presentation of this film (I didn't see any previews for it beforehand), but there's nothing here to elicit wonderment or awe.
The acting just isn't good, but there aren't any characters, so it barely matters. Waddington overacts in a rare way, but it's still not fun like most overacting usually is. March has almost no lines, and therefore doesn't have much of chance to prove anything. Van Dien's wooden (but not terrible) acting is appropriate for Starship Troopers, but here he needs to carry the whole show. He looks right for the role, but he begins the film with a hint of some unknown accent, and slowly loses it as the film progresses. This isn't that big of a deal, really, because the screenplay (written by *two* people with apparently no judgment whatsoever) provides almost no dialogue through the second half of the film.
Tarzan and the Lost City is not a good Tarzan film. It's not a good film by any comparison, or by any definition of a "good" film. It is not entertaining. It is not well-crafted. It's a boring chore, an exercise in inadequacy and ineptitude. I don't recommend it, even if you like bad films, even if you love Tarzan films. I didn't care about Tarzan films before this, and I'll approach them with skepticism from now on.
* out of **** (2/10, D-)
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Nathaniel R. Atcheson
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