The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

This guy gets naked. A lot.

Now we meet the Invisible Man, who is given the completely lackluster introduction of talking out of nowhere and - prepare to be amazed past your wildest dreams - carrying a stack of papers that he plops down in front of Q. Q is nonplussed, whining about this being a "parlor game" and some such. InvisMan makes himself noticeable, at least, by donning a trenchcoat and some white face paint (giving the film its due: these effects are nifty to watch).

The scene plods on. Mina Harker ("Vampire Lady" to the less-educated among us) barges in with widow's veil and snappy comebacks included. Q, all riled up over invisible papers and fancy moustaches, gives her a hard time: "I'm still waiting to be impressed!" Dude, she just got here! What's with the attitude? Oh, I get it: repressed sexual tension. Ew. 19:27

Ahab's "Great White Whale"

The clock ticking on that ominous four-day deadline, M declares they need to get going! To Venice? Nay! To recruit two more idiots… er, Leaguers, because you can't save the world until you've formed a quorum. The troop stomps out into the daylight, which appears to be fading as the planet shifts its course far away from the sun. They're all surprised to see Nemo's "auto-mo-bile", a gigantic white phallic symbol taken straight from the 1920's. Also, with two axels in the front, which makes me really wonder how the car turns. Hey, you don't need turnin' when you have the world's only auto-mo-bile! "Yeah, but what is it?" InvisMan rightly asks. Instead of giving a straight answer, Nemo does that infuriating dramatic gesture that only serves to sound ominous and be redundant: "The future, gentlemen. The future." So Captain Nemo founded Ford Motor Company? They meet Nemo's first mate ("Call me Ishmael") and the car zooms away, headlights and all. Six horses die along the way. In the car, the Leaguers have a conversation that boggles us with sentences that have nothing to do with each other:

INVISMAN: So. How did M get you?

Q: None of your business.

MINA: You're a little testy, Mr. Q.

Q: Mrs. Harker, I doubt if you measure danger the way I do.

MINA: And I imagine you have quite the library, Mr. Quartermain. All those books you must've read merely by looking at their covers.

Q: I've had women along on past exploits, and found them to be, at best, a distraction.

MINA: Do I distract you?

[sound of Justin's mind whimpering and trying to make sense out of happy color snake rainbow milkshake explosions]

Q reveals that he's buried two wives and many lovers, and sounds quite proud of this fact. Um, so were they alive at the time? "Honey, you're a distraction to my exploit! Into the hole you go!" 20:45

They should've drawn an arrow to it, too

It's nighttime, but what does that really matter to this film? East London Docks, according to the title card. InvisMan name-drops Jack the Ripper. They knock at the door and meet Dorian Gray, who's reluctant to go until Mina turns on the charm. They go up the stairs and Q points out the obvious missing picture on the wall. Why is it obvious? Because in movie-ese, whenever a filmmaker wants you to notice that a picture is gone, they outline the missing frame in black soot. Dorian gets grumpy at the mention, but since this picture is the only thing that can end him if he looks at it, why would he want it there anyway?

They enter Dorian's library and there's a lot of preening and plumage-boasting to spare. Nobody really like anyone else, Dorian flirts with Mina while stroking his cane, and Mina looks as if she's two seconds from dislocating her jaw and swallowing them all whole. We then learn, out of nowhere, that Q is supposedly indestructible because an African witch doctor blessed him, and Africa itself would never allow him to die. You must remember this conversation, because when a certain moment comes later in the film, it's the only thing that will save you from one long, endless scream. Nemo asks Dorian what his unique talent is, to put on the LXG trading cards. I wagered it was looking like a nancy-boy, but Dorian cuts us all down with a withering "Experience." Oh. Showed you guys.

After a half hour of agonizing waiting behind bookcases, minions are relieved to finally be able to jump out and yell "SURPRISE!" and see Q pee his khakis. Fantom shows up and tries to get the good guys to defect to the side of Evil and Fashion. I think I would've given most of my worldly possessions to see this happen: "Oh… you know what? Sure. M's a tool. Go Team Evil!"

Mark Twain is rolling around in his grave. Not the laughing kind of rolling, either.

As Fantom goes on a stilted rant for the cause of evil, Q - and only Q - sees a mysterious figure step out from behind the only remaining bookshelf. These bookshelves are the BEST in hide-and-go seek. The person is wearing a metal pith helmet and a scarf around the mouth, which either signifies "I have a communicable disease" or "I'm a great hero who needs some sort of dramatic reveal later on." He levels the rifle at the good guys (sort of) and gives Q a wink. Q winks back and gives a tiny little kissing gesture in return. Not really.

Okay, big fight scene. I'm not going to describe it all, because trying to detail a fight in LXG is like trying to calmly analyze a headache when all you can feel are the gnomes inside your skull trying to tunnel out using rock hammers. The editing's a mess and the logic choppy as all get out. However, some important things of note:

• InvisMan manages, under a storm of bullets, to completely disrobe and wash the makeup completely from his face.
• Pith Helmet takes out about ten bad guys with his rifle.
• Dorian calmly takes up a sword, is plugged by dozens of bullets, and calmly walks up to kill his attackers without flinching.
• Bad guys always spin around with a surprised "Hur!" when shot.
• There's a never-ending rain of paper coming from nowhere in particular. It's seriously the most ridiculous part of the scene, like someone upstairs is shredding dictionaries and dumping through the skylight.
• Nemo goes all kung-fu on baddies and isn't even fired upon.
• One of the bad guys stops Q from chasing Fantom by jumping in front of him, and then tossing off a "Run for it, James!" over his shoulder. James? Ah. That's a "clue" for "later".
• Mina does NOTHING. She loses at heroism.

All in all, it's not the worst scene in the film, but there's more spastic cuts here than Michael Bay could shake an editing stick at. 28:46

Minutes later, her friends held a Kool-Aid intervention

We now move to the post-battle wrap-up, where everyone's mildly amazed at Dorian's invincibility, where Mina is mildly chastised for being as useful as a bookmark in a room full of shredded books, and where a remaining bad guy pops up from under a tea cozy to take Mina hostage with a knife. Oh, this is the point when Mina does something! And that something is: she bites him. Vampires - the horror genre's mosquitoes. A stage hand hurriedly runs up and smears tomato soup all over her mouth. Yummy. Then, as the grossed-out Leaguers watch, she dives back in for seconds and comes up with a completely clean mouth and a bit of lip-smacking happiness.

Since that piece of character development is sucked dry, it's on to meeting the mysterious man of mystery: Special Agent [Tom] Sawyer! It's common knowledge that Mr. Sawyer wasn't present in Alan Moore's graphic novel, and the reported reason he was included was to make the American audiences feel more involved. Personally, and I don't know about you, but this is condescending on so many levels. Would any of us be truly lost if we didn't have an American up there to identify with? Did the filmmakers envision a pandemic of theater audiences flapping their arms and clucking their tongues at the British accents and literary references? And also… why Tom Sawyer? He isn't a kid any more, he doesn't whitewash anything (and InvisMan would be first up if he did), and he's the second most useless character in this room. Take a guess as to the first.

Being the generous government that the USA is, they sent Sawyer to help out and to also to get him away from Becky Thatcher, who filed for a court restraining order the month previous. Sawyer joins the League, and Dorian is shamed enough to come along too, while awkwardly hitting on Mina. Reoccurring Theme: Anyone male in LXG hits on Mina. Only God knows why. Although he's been spitting venom at anyone approaching him in the past ten scenes, Q takes a liking to Sawyer immediately.

Time is ticking, remember! Now that they filled up the League, plus one, they're off to Ven- oh wait, Paris! Why? Gotta recruit one more, apparently. Hey, you just said… you just said you were full! Well, it makes sense. Then they'll have enough to combine for a mega-power-attack and form the ultimate super-Leaguer: Book Reportobot! They talk about hunting down this "beast", and make a completely awkward segue to asking Mina about her vampirism (cue boring Dracula story). Finally Nemo pulls out his latest form of transportation: a public bus that explodes if the speed dips below 55mph!

A crap-load of elephants had to die to make this sub out of pure ivory

Just kidding. It's the Nautilus, which puts Nemo's phallic car to shame. This thing is honestly bigger than the Titanic, if the scale of the movie has anything to say about it. Massive, impressive, and completely illogical in every way possible. For instance, this thing must be at least seven or eight stories tall, and rises out of the river Thames (since this is London). Let's just hope it's at high tide, otherwise Nemo might be beached for a while - on average in London, the Thames is only about 2 meters deep. Let's also just ignore the fact that the Nautilus is about five city blocks long, which does present some turn-around problems. Wait until we get to Venice! 33:08

It's Paris. Trust me - the Eiffel Tower is in pretty much every shot. Sawyer and Q. are darting through the streets, chasing a rooftop-bound Mr. Hyde (who's fresh from his appearance in Van Helsing). "I don't see what we need a big monkey for," Sawyer whines. Fair enough, Tom, nobody seems to know what we need you for either. I love that Hyde's top hat stays on the entire time, leaping and dashing. Q (with his elephant gun) and Sawyer (with two six-shooters) try to guide Hyde into a trap. Q almost gets smooshed by a piece of building, and quips "That was naughty!" Um, judges score "funny" on this quote. Finally Hyde is shot into a net that traps him and drags him about six city blocks (seriously), straight into the Nautilus, which nimbly navigates yet another river inlet. Sawyer picks up Hyde's giant hat, causing us to speculate how a monster gets clothes tailored to fit. 35:03

"Just walk away, McFly!"

Inside the sub, Hyde's apparently causing the walls to shake, Mina's doing her best Sean Connery impression (which isn't that good), and Dorian is tweezing his eyebrows. You read that right. Tweezing. Everyone makes their way down to the freezer, where Hyde's in chains and going through caffeine withdrawal. I'm of a mixed mind as to the look of Hyde, who seems to have normal human features waist-down, and grossly huge stuff upstairs. He also looks like a very fat version of Biff Tannen from Back to the Future. All of the sailors courteously get close enough so they can get swatted through the air. Nemo has - of course - a harpoon. Q strikes up a deal with Hyde for amnesty, who responds with a quite eloquent little speech. "I'm yours," Hyde agrees, and Mina quirks her mouth and does a little happy "hm!" at the thought. Anyone else thinking of the song "Maneater"? Hyde tells Sawyer he "stinks of fear"; I concur, just eliminate the last two words from that phrase. Hyde then transforms back into Jekyll, in a pretty cool fashion (at least I'm glad they didn't resort to the clichéd computer morphing). Q announces "The League is set", and everyone smiles and nods knowingly, even though they all hate each other's guts, and nobody has a really good reason for being here, other than wanting to get it on with Mina. They have three days to get to Venice. 38:46