Robert P.'s Reviews

Largely disappointing. Johnny Depp is quirky and engaging as always, and Deep Roy gives a unique and entertaining performance as ALL of the Oompa Loompas, but overall, the best I can say about this version is that it was worth watching - once. Unfortunately, it pales compared to the original, which remains as perfectly wonderful on the 10th viewing as it was on the first. Not so with this version. If you've seen the original, you can't help but be let down by this remake. I'm a huge Depp fan, but he's no Gene Wilder. Wilder was perfect for the role, while Depp is simply... strange, even creepy, as Willy Wonka. He is as wrong for the role as Wilder would have been for the role of Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Some movies were perfect in their original incarnation, and should simply never be remade. This is one of them.
Review Date: 3/11/2017

All the Potter heads complaining really need to get a life. Of COURSE there are lots of missing scenes! All novels have to be severely truncated/compressed/rearranged when translated to film, because there's always too much to include. When Frank Herbert's Dune was first filmed, they included every major scene in the book. Guess what? It was nine hours long! That's fine if you're doing a TV miniseries, but if you're doing a theatrical film, you have to cut most of that out to get it down to 2 hours or so, and that's what they did. It's the same with Half-Blood Prince. This one book is already filling TWO movies; to include all the other things people are complaining about missing would take another TWO, maybe even FOUR movies. Sorry, not going to happen. Get over it.

This actually was a very good film, but you'll ALWAYS be disappointed if you expect a movie to closely follow the book. My advice to people like that is to always see the movie first - that way, you'll find the book a wonderful expansion of the movie, instead of seeing the movie as a horrible abbeviation of the book.
Review Date: 4/25/2011

If you want to waste a few hours watching seriocomic "reimagined" versions of these classic stories, you could do worse (I suppose) than these two movies. They're pleasant enough, but nothing to write home about, and the only thing they have in common with the novels (beyond the titles) are the general plots. On the other hand, if you want serious treatments of these works, skip this lightweight pabulum and buy the original 1959 (Journey to the Center of the Earth) and 1961 (Mysterious Island) movies. The originals take liberties with the stories from the novels too (although much less so than these remakes), and the special effects in movies that old obviously are primitive by modern standards; yet the more than 50-year-old originals are far, far better movies and are much closer to the novels.
Review Date: 5/27/2015

I have huge respect for Robert Wise as a director, but I have to say I was extremely disappointed in this "Director's Cut" of the film. The scenes he removed took away from the film's appeal to those of us who prefer serious, high concept, "thinking person's" Science Fiction, as opposed to action SF films, and the former is what this first cinematic Trek film was intended to be (just as the original series was intended to be).

The cuts to the original release were intended to increase the pacing of the film, since "serious" Sci-Fi is not what the general public is interested in; but fans of the original series waited 10 years for the return of Star Trek, and we loved every SECOND of this film just as it was released. The scenes young or casual fans today call "boring" were absolutely awe-inspiring to us, and removing any of them is practically sacrilegious to us. In fact, in our opinion the only improvement to this film over how it was in its first release was the restoration of additional scenes cut from the original release when the Extended Edition was later released on Laserdisc. That made the movie even LONGER, which we still feel was a GOOD thing. Despite some of the improvements in special effects, and one new scene on the bridge, watching this shortened version after being used to the longer versions is deeply dissatisfying.

In summary, the original version of this film was magnificent, the extended version even better, and this, well to be honest, an almost complete let down. If you're an old time Trekker, my advice is to get the original release instead of this one, or better yet, the extended version if you can find it.
Review Date: 4/1/2023

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