CinemaNow - Around the World in 80 Days (2004)

Reviews of the latest remake of Around the World in 80 Days are decidedly mixed. On the one hand, Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times is calling it a jolly comedy made from the wheezy high concept. Stephen Holden in the New York Times calls it a deliriously silly caper that goes out of its way to thumb its nose at logic. And Manohla Dargis in the Los Angeles Times writes glowingly that the movie sails along on a slipstream of pleasant scenery, amusing incident and the boundless charms of its appealing leading men, Jackie Chan and Steve Coogan: It's an unexpectedly buoyant spectacular. On the other hand, Chris Kaltenbach writes in the Baltimore Sun: Heaven knows what the suits at Disney were thinking, for what they ended up with was a bland Jackie Chan movie and a lifeless travelogue. Similarly Lou Lumenick writes in the New York Post that the film amounts to an exceedingly lame vehicle for an increasingly tired-looking Jackie Chan. [It] might as well be called Around the World in 80 Yawns. Noting that the film reportedly cost $110 million to make, Stephen Hunter asks in the Washington Post: How could they spend so much money and end up with something that looks so Orlando? Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail notes dolefully that while Disney bought the film and didn't produce it itself, it nevertheless resonates with the Magic Kingdom experience. And Jack Mathews in the New York Post grumbles that the movie is one of the lamest remakes of a classic film I've ever seen.