Kilmerthon: The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)

NOTE: All future Kilmerthon reviews will be sorted under the label "Val Kilmer".

I regret not recording my thoughts back when I was watching all those Baldwin movies so, as long as I've got a similar fascination with Val Kilmer, I'm gonna try to do that, even if they're fairly brief and marred by my own personal biases.

Out of 5:

Story:⭐⭐

Dialogue:⭐

Characters: ⭐⭐

Visuals:⭐⭐⭐

Soul:⭐

Kilmer:⭐⭐⭐

 

This film is the epitome of not giving a damn. As a furry I came into it with an open mind - H.G. Wells' novel is arguably one of the first pieces of furry literature, so as a furry I hoped I'd be able to glean something from it.

I'm not good with movie analysis so I'll just give my thoughts straight up:

I'm honestly not sure what tone they were going for. If they were going for grindhouse I think they muddied it with an attempted sympathetic protagonist and romance subplot. The costumes were actually pretty good but not good enough to warrant a viewing based on that alone. Everything else besides the visuals felt woefully underbaked. Like, oozing raw batter underbaked. I could see attempts at deeper character development, but they were never committed to. The biggest problem in terms of story, I feel, is that this narrative demands at least a little introspection - Wells' novel is ultimately an allegory for the cruelty of humankind, but the movie approaches the subject matter in the most shallow terms possible (mutants with machine guns). So yeah. Even as a furry, I was not a huge fan.

 

Was this movie worth it to a fan of Val Kilmer? Sure. He does not give a fuck here and as a result I think a decent amount of his true arrogant self shines through under the crappy dialogue, which at the very least gives the film a bit of energy. There was also this weird sexual tension between Montgomery and Douglas during the first half that worked well as a set of jangling keys to get me through some of the more grating moments.

I'm unreasonably empathetic and often feel bad for good actors stuck in crappy roles but Val looked like he was making the best out of a crumby situation. His character was high for most of his final act but part of me wonders if that wasn't get Val using the excuse of method acting to make the process a bit less painful.

There's a scene 54 minutes in that I Christened The Only Good 30 Seconds In This Movie where a shirtless Kilmer with a flask and walkman tucked into his shorts gives David Thewlis a nice view of his junk while smoking a blunt and admitting he's had sex with a pig lady.

I haven't really done much research into production issues so I can't tell you what went down with any certainty, but I imagine the rocky production contributed to the downer vibe of this movie and my incredibly low SOUL rating. This is the movie that convinced me that my personal Movie Soul rating should be a quantifiable rating in all my future reviews.

Movies either feel soulful or soulless to me. Movies are a medium inherently tied to humanity - they are works of humanity reflecting back how we view ourselves in times of crisis and peace. The SOUL rating is not neccisarily a rating of how humanistic a given movie is, but rather, if it attempts to say something considered about humanity and if that was one of the main driving factors behind the story.

That's very convoluted and probably makes no sense. It's a gut feeling, It's a measure of whether or not a movie leaves me feeling empty inside. And this one did.

 

This movie was a sad orgasm achieved via some particularly shameful pornography. It got there in the end but nobody's happier for it.

If nothing else, I would love to give the original novel a read myself and see if I can't propose a better script. Time After Time (1979), a loose sci-fi adaptation of Wells' The Time Machine, is absolutely adorable and one of my favourite 70s movies, so a successful Wells adaptation is within the realm of possibility. But this one ain't it.