Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon (1967)
Phineas T. Barnum and friends finance the first flight to the moon but find the task a little above them. They attempt to blast their rocket into orbit from a massive gun barrel built into the side of a Welsh mountain, but money troubles, spies and saboteurs ensure that the plan is doomed before it starts...
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Wonderful character development!
Sorry, this movie sucks
Sadly Over-hyped
It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
A lot of people in Victorian dress fanny about while proposing to build and send a rocket to the moon.This film should be sued under the Trades Descriptions Act for several reasons.One, the title sells it as Vernian science fiction: it isn't. Sending a rocket to the moon is the furthest thing from its tiny little mind.Two, it is presented as a comedy: it isn't. That would require the script to be funny, an area in which it fails woefully.I award it points for good period detail, and a great cast who do the best the can with the poor material they have been given, with the exceptions of Troy Donahue and Daliah (not Deliah) Lavi, who both manage to be worse than the script. No mean feat.
Terry Thomas played a caddish villain in 'Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines' and 'Monte Carlo or Bust' both big hits with an all star cast.Rocket to the Moon sees Thomas again playing the bounder. Based very loosely on the Jules Verne novel, its another madcap romp with wacky inventions. This time building a moonship to go to the moon in the Victorian era with little Jimmy Clitheroe being the unlucky pilot. Burl Ives turns up as the money scheming PT Barnum, there is a French damsel following one of her two boyfriends to England. Gert Frobe plays a madcap explosives expert.Whereas Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines was frenetic fun with many amusing vignettes. This is an unfunny badly written drivel, overlong, scenes padded out so much it tries your patience, poor acting from one of the leads (Troy Donahue, I assume James Fox was not available,) implausible scenarios such as the chase scene between the car and a penny farthing (where incidentally you see some geese being run over.)I could not wait for this film to finish it really tried my patience as it was one overlong, padded and stupid scene after another, wasting the talents of some good actors. Thankfully Terry Thomas and Graham Stark lift it from a total bomb rating. I recently re-watched Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and in comparison that film is vintage champagne with this being vinegar.
If this movie is based on Jules Verne (or even simply inspired), well "Ttanic" is an adaptation of Tolstoi's "War and Peace".This is not based on the original book by Le Grand Verne (characters, story, basically everything is different...), this is not even funny. When you look at the very professional cast, you wonder how it was not possible to at least salvage some part of the movie. But, no, they could not even managed to do that."Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" was not a great movie but it looks like "Citizen Kane" compared to that... thing.Truly awful.
The acting in this movie is good, but the story could have been better. The general plot was a good one, but was pulled off poorly, the writers must have been sniffing something (like some of the professors did in the movie[hehe]) to not revise and edit this more. This was a really enjoyable movie to watch anyway though, but could land on Mystery Science Theater 3000 some day.