The Island At The Top Of The World (1974)........spent over five years in preparation before the Walt Disney company finally let it loose as their Christmas week attraction.........
And for all of their efforts, the meticulous storyboarding, the beautifully rendered matte illustrations by Disney designer Peter Ellenshaw, the robust Maurice Jarre score the stunning nature footage, the carefully crafted imitation Jules Verne script............we sat all by ourselves, in an empty theater on the week it opened.........
What went wrong?
We've got our own theories.........in subjecting the film to the same rigorous fine tuning as their animated movies, Disney drained the life out of it......there's not a single spontaneous moment in the entire running time........the film seems more like one of those $75.00 coffee table books (as in "The Art Of The Island At The Top Of The World") that you gift to a movie buff for Christmas....
The casting's problematic too........deliberately avoiding stars, the movie features Donald Sinden as a blustering, blowhard Brit tycoon in desperate search of his estranged son, who disappeared while on an arctic voyage. This pompous upperclass twit convinces an American explorer (David Hartman) to join him on his quest............which involves floating to the North Pole via the Hyperion, a colorfully painted dirigible captained by a caricatured, over excitable Frenchman (Jacques Marin).
Sinden and Marin carry on as if they're auditioning to voice Disney cartoon characters.......while Hartman, a big bland TV actor, glumly marches through the movie like he's narrating it instead of starring in it. (he thereafter left acting altogether to become the host of ABC's "Good Morning America".....perhaps his true calling.....)
So off we all go to the still frozen top 'o the world (not yet melted by climate change)....with Peter Ellenshaw's special effect airship Hyperion given a lovely sweeping theme all its own by Maurice Jarre......
And before you know it, our intrepid crew stumble upon a volcanic-heated Shangra-La populated by the descendants of Eric The Red's Viking explorers.........and now home to Sinden's wayward son, who's even got his own hot Viking girlfriend.........
The Disney Vikings, with lustrous, coiffed long blonde hair, don't take kindly to the explorers......especially their head guy, The Godi, who condemns them to a good old fashioned Viking funeral cruise aboard a burning ship. Set free by the Viking Babe, our heroes flee a relentless pursuit by the Godi and his horned-helmet gang, stopping off to dodge lava flows and killer whales who pop up like they're still performing at Sea World.....
Fun stuff to watch, but never for one second dramatically engaging.......more like flipping the glossy pages of that $75.00 'The Art Of...." book we mentioned earlier.
..........which may be the reason BQ found himself all alone viewing it just before Christmas of '74.........(they even gave the teen girl manning the popcorn the night off.....)
But all these years later, we still found it, even with all its over-Disneyfied perfection, a bright and shiny holiday toy. Gather family 'round for a view, we say.........and a huge plus - it's at least one hour shorter than a typical Marvel movie......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).
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