TARZAN AND THE LOST CITY (1998) ** It's not the sort of show that requires good actors, or even has much use for one. Maureen O'Sullivan was great as Jane in the early days, but the franchise hasn't always suffered much by plugging in some other female foil to be astonished. So it isn't nearly fatal that Casper Van Dien doesn't appear to have much idea of what he should be trying to do, artistically. In fact the more endearing facets of his performance are that every once in awhile he remembers that he's supposed to be English and slurs a phrase like a Liverpool dockmaster, and that his hair organization doesn't appear to be effected by any action, however severe. The main problem with his performance is that he just isn't intimidating-he's not the first person you'd worry about in any decent gang fight- and that being the case I'm offended that I wasn't at least given the amusement of seeing his depiction of the standard "Tarzan fighting an alligator" sequence. And then Jane March, I didn't even realize that they were trying to pass her off as Jane for the longest time...she doesn't seem like a young lady capable of finding her way to even the most pleasant shops, much less the depths of the jungle. Her posh and polished approach to speaking does offer some comic contrast to the proceedings, but she's always as likely to make it through without being captured by the bad guys as would be Daphne of Scooby-Doo. So the leads are neither very good nor bad enough to be individually entertaining, but at least the pace is reasonable-except for the scenes where they try to generate sincere feelings of empathy and intimacy by gawking at each other-and there's some funner stuff on the sides. Winston Ntshona is about as credible as you can get as a shaman capable of creating warriors from bones and turning himself into a swarm of bees. If you ask, "Why doesn't he just form a battalion of zombies, why does he need Tarzan?" you've definitely missed the point. I like the magical stuff, and while the mystical city was slightly disappointing, it was pretty good and I'm sure they weren't working with a Spielberg budget. Wouldn't have helped much anyway.
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