Boys of Lost Island

LOST BOYS synopsis 2/28/06 When a group of boys are stranded on a deserted island after a storm destroys their boat, they know that the only way they'll survive is to stick together. But when another storm beaches another boat, the boys find they are sharing the island with some very evil criminals. Now it will take some quick thinking and some clever plotting to not only survive, but to stay alive. And will they ever be able to escape and get back home? Based on a story by Jules Verne, BOYS OF LOST ISLAND is filled with non-stop, edge-of-your-seat adventure.

Should have stayed lost ...

Sort of like a cross between "Gilligan's Island" (without the humor) and "Lost" (without the suspense) ... maybe well intended but the end results will in no way satisfy. I doubt that anyone actually sets out to make a bad movie but in this case if that was their goal they have been successful. If it's on cable and you're bored you might want to see if you can sit through the entire movie but I sure wouldn't spend good money to purchase or even rent it. September 27, 2008

A minor Verne film, attempting and accomplishing little

STRANGE HOLIDAY (1969), released in 1992 by GoodTimes [sic] Home Video as BOYS OF LOST ISLAND, is actually one of the most faithful of Verne films, but that is primarily a result of the picture's modest scope. Based on Two Years's Holiday (1888), the story tells of a group of schoolchildren whose ship slips its moorings during a storm, and are afterward shipwrecked on a deserted island. The book is notable for its realistic portrayal of the clashing nationalities and inclinations of the children, who are tempted to break into various factions. However, they manage to survive due to their ability to unite and preserve their civilized traditions. Today, the positivist sentiment makes Two Years's Holiday seem partly a response to William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), a book that took a similar situation and reversed Verne's theme.

STRANGE HOLIDAY compresses Two Years's Holiday into 75 minutes, following the outline of the book and adding little that is new. The boys prudently go about surviving the shipwreck, finding the cave of a dead Frenchman who had been shipwrecked long before. They make the cave habitable, and elect the sensible Gordon (Van Alexander) as their leader, hunting and exploring the island. An attempt by Doniphan (Mark Healey) to establish separate quarters is dropped when one of his followers suffers a broken leg, and the boys reunite. They happily agree not to punish the younger Briant (Jaeme Hamilton) when he confesses that he foolishly loosed the ropes that had moored their boat. Further exploration by Doniphan after another storm reveals a second shipwreck, and its survivors are three ruffians who go after the boys.

Little time is allowed for characterization or more than the sketchiest notice of the conflicts between the children. However, Moco (Jaime Messang) receives more attention than he does in the novel, and is portrayed in STRANGE HOLIDAY as a native who is wiser than his white comrades in the means of survival. He devises a "devil" scheme to convince the pirates that the island is haunted, with the result that two of the pirates kill one another and a third is captured. To heighten the contrast with the boys, the shipwrecked young lady (Carmen Duncan, the best performer in the film in an amateurish group) spends her first minutes, after regaining consciousness, fixing her hair, while the lads watch her, bored. The ship's carpenter has also survived, and with his help, the boys discover they are on an archipelago and repair a ship, sailing to safety.

While the script generally helps the film, it is obscured by the dreadful elocution of the children, all of whom appear to be the appropriate ages, between eight and fourteen. However, much of the story's charm is eliminated by the film altering the setting from Verne's time to the present. While this was doubtless partly due to budgetary constraints, the change to contemporary period was probably also deemed the best way to intrigue the youthful audience the picture was addressing. Surprisingly, the pirate invasion that provides the final menace, and ultimately leads to the castaways's escape, does not seem incongruous in the setting; the resemblance approximates smugglers.

Regrettably, STRANGE HOLIDAY also never escapes the limitations imposed by its cost and audience. The movie is clearly aimed at children's matinees, and saw minimal release and television showing, reflecting the form's typical low cost, inept acting, and mediocre direction. Produced, written, and directed by Mende Brown, the picture was filmed by Mass-Brown Pictures in Australia, and shot in color and widescreen in studios in Sydney and around the nearby coastline. Much of the location photography and general art direction is quite pleasing, and the best part of the picture. However, the score by Tommy Tycho is loud, intrusive, and pointless, and the opening and closing credits are ruined by ludicrous voice-overs of a boy's choir singing "Row, row, row your boat." STRANGE HOLIDAY is a minor Verne film, in a lesser vein, attempting and accomplishing little.

February 12, 2008

Very Poor Adaptation of Jules Verne's Adventure Tale

Australian film "Boys of Lost Island" is loosely based on "Deux ans de vacances" (Two Years' Vacation), Jules Verne's 1888 novel. I know little about the film itself, but according to IMDb, it was made in 1969 with largely unknown cast.

Anyway, probably you know Verne's original story, which is about fifteen boys (and a dog) stranded on an uncharted island. If you are looking for the same kind of adventures as the book, you will be much disappointed with this adaptation, which lacks virtually everything. The poor storytelling, amateurish acting and lack of direction are so visible in the first 10 minutes where the boys' ship is met with a "storm," but actually, the storm is nothing but cheap effects and bad editing. After all, the soulless adaptation looks like an extended episode from some cancelled TV show of the 60s.

Well, that's not the worst part of the film, though. As the film begins, it unnecessarily shows us that it is set in modern times when searching the missing boys are much easier than Verne's time. That also means the survival does not look as hard as it should be for these ten boys (they reduced the number to 10), who can easily get food, water and a map, too. The boys dressed in clean shirt look rather cheerful and can do a variety of things. They don't even try to think about how come their ship drifted into the ocean (one of the crucial points of Verne's book).

"Boys of Lost Island" could have been fun with a skillful narrative, which it doesn't have. Some of the memorable episodes from the book are certainly there, but they are done all in an awfully banal way. The boys (indistinguishable from one another) quarrel among themselves and some of them leave the camp, but they come back just in 5 minutes. No political allegory or emotional tension can be seen here.

When the boys hear weird noises coming behind the cave's wall, the mystery is soon solved before it manages to make us truly care. Plus, I hate to say this, but none of these boys can show decent acting, which might have helped. As it is, this is really a bad adaptation with pedestrian direction.
November 30, 2007

A fair-to-middlin' movie for the kids...

--
...but quite slowly paced and most assuredly outdated.

It's so politically incorrect, for example, that it shows adolescent and preadolescent boys - without adult supervision - confidently and effectively handling the sorts of small-caliber rifles that rural Americans learn to use at about the same age. And it accepts this as a matter of common sense, as if anyone who supposed otherwise was some sort of drooling idiot.

If you have a kid in the household who had enjoyed Disney's film version of *Swiss Family Robinson* (1960), this low-budget, thoroughly unpolished production is a potential value.
-- June 14, 2007

Puerile, inaccurate, ignorant garbage

This is the worst movie I have ever watched. The maritime details are ridiculous. The yawl which delivers the boys (unharmed and unafraid) to the lost island is referred to by everyone, including the officials mounting a search, as a schooner. None of the boys wear lifejackets, even in the storm which drives them ashore. There is no sign of a radio although these are mandatory. The yacht carries rifles and ammunition and the boys are expert enough to shoot down birds on the wing, yet when they are fired on by bad guys on an exposed beach later in the film they do not return fire, even though they have the advantage of covering rocks.
Later when they sortie into the night against the bad guys they all wear spotless white shirts. They convert a rowing dinghy for sailing and sail it against the wind without bothering to add a keel, a centre-board or lee boards. When the mandatory beautiful girl turns up after having been shipwrecked and sharing a lifeboat with the bad guys she looks as if she has made a pit stop at the hairdresser's and beautician's. Oh, and the wild life includes sulphur crested cockatoos, goannas, kookaburras and emus, but they have no idea where they are!
Feeble, fatuous and foolish. I'm ashamed that it was made in Australia.
April 27, 2007

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