Forgotten movies – Around the world in 80 days (1989)

Based on the novel by Julies Verne; in the year 1871 Phileas Fogg takes on a wager to prove that a journey around the world in 80 days is possible. Along the way he makes friends, meets the love of his life and, above all, loses time. Will he make it back to the London reform club on time?

This is how popular culture goes; sometimes an entertainment business wants to go big and people at the time admire it for it – but, then, as time goes by, they forget it.
In 1988 Harmony Gold wanted to go big and they set their eyes on the classic novella: Around the world in eighty days by Jules Verne.

Spare no expense (as the John Hammond-character would have it four years later) they hired a top notch cast

They even managed to include Robert Morley and John Mills from Michael Anderson’s (equally ambitious) original staring David Niven and Cantinflas.

and shot the tale of Phileas Fogg and his trusty manservant Passepartout around the globe. And, when I say: 'around the globe', I do mean around the globe! Which, in the late eighties was quite the pricey undertaking. So the company  was going big!

The result was a highly ambitious five-hour movie that sprinkled from delight on every corner of the TV-screen. Everything that one could think of about travelling the world in the 1800’s was in there: steam trains, elephants, pirates, cowboy gunmen and crime.

It’s like Harmony Gold took up the challenge the late Michael Anderson left. He went big in cinemas in 1956, in 1989 television went even bigger.

But, alas, hardly anybody remembers this beauty of an adventure movie nowadays.
But that’s where I come in!

Pack your bags
Featuring a (very) young Pierce Brosnan as the leading character this movie already had half in the bag. Nobody but a pre-Bond Pierce can play ‘stiff upper lip’ as it should today. Just seeing him (worried) as he goes his way in the final seconds of the bet is great acting of a man pushing every emotion bursting down to his belly.

The same goes for Peter Ustinov who was hired as a comic relieve but managed to transform it to a character with a true hearth. Ustinov’s character Fix is never, ever, a bad man. He’s the common bloke who just wants to do his job right. Particularly so because he wants to marry his charming sweetheart (a sweet actress featured during the credits that fulfils this character who until then was only spoken about by Fix).

Eric Idle, then, is the odd one out. Why not hire a true French person? Truth be told, Idle was spreading his wings during those years and quickly found

After some mediocre events like Too much sun and Splitting Heirs.

that, even though, he’s a capable actor (as he certainly is in here) he’s far better off being a producer.

Idle, as Passepartout, works, but then, at the same time, he does not. It is difficult to explain unless you compare him to the character written in the script: a French athletic (circus experience) womanizer. Just looking at Eric Idle you know that that(!)’s not the case.

Still Idle does his best and he, does, gets away with most of it. But in the end he is the weakest link in the bunch.

To end with a strong performance it is the Indian princess Aouda played by Julia Nickson.
Feminism is all the rage right now. But, somehow, people tend to forget that it was also a rather big thing in the late ‘80s.

Picking up the ‘feminist’ glove ‘our’ princess shines as she dares Fogg –time and again- to explain his emotions and himself. She is deeply in love with him but she will be damned if he doesn’t give her something in return!

I, especially, enjoyed her character because she is the ‘true’ original against the (always lovely) Shirley MacLaine in the original-movie version.

At least the actress is born in the right continent.

Board the train
Now, of course, there are faults in this movie. The whole French primadonna bit at the start you can skip. Also the ‘I hid your guns!’-bit, later on is a bit too ‘80s political correcty to carry on the flow of the show.

Even though, as I was re-watching this movie for this article it is still very much an issue. Americans and their guns (sigh).

Then there’s the whole of China and Japan-bit that (as in the original book) is boring.

The Jacky Chan-adaptationin 2004 tried to make it interesting by including the great Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But, in the end, that’s all people will remember: Schwarzenegger was in there, somewhere. 

But overall the movie is structurally perfect; the reason being: that Fogg has to stay on the move all the time. There is no moment to rest!

As such, every little scriptural meandering gets swallowed up in the whole of things. In short: they don’t matter because Fogg has moved on.

Stuck in traffic
When you watch this movie you see the wonders of the world! The director Buzz Kulik hasn’t forgotten the first rule about adapting Verne’s novel: ‘show the people of the world places they’ve never been!’

A rule the same year (truly) encompassed in Michael Palin’s (another Python) travel documentary.

Each landscape and each setting is –almost- Disney-esqe- in beauty. You’d want to travel there because the frame (and the story) leave reality out of the picture.

There are the French Alps, the American prairies, those Japanese paper windows. It’s a visual desire to time-travel back in time to.

True, this version, doesn’t have the (famous) train-ride over a collapsing bridge (a shame) it did in the original. But it does show the beauty of the countries it visits in the bests of sense.

Around the world in 80 days shows the beauty of the world not only in the time setting of the movie but also as it was in 1989-or so. Around the world in 80 days invites the viewer to enjoy the splendour and seduces the viewer to get the bags together and go travelling.

Keeping track of time
The thrill of the story about Phillias Fogg has always been the last stretch. Michael Anderson realized this. So, obviously, he placed dear, meek, David Niven, in the clutches of a religious choir.

The end-strech of the 1989's version of Around the world in 80 days is equal to its predecessor in every way. Just seeing Brosnann’s Fogg commanding the ship to ‘break everything wooden to burn’ (paraphrasing) is a feast for the senses.
By then the clock is ticking loudly and (even though you know how it is going to end) your blood is up.

It is the ‘end-strech’ that this version of the beloved tale does on par with the original (which is quite a feat).

Arriving
When you compare this four-hour marathon of a movie with the original you have to accept that this 1989’s production went far-more-out-there than 1956 ever dared.

It shows the spectacular beauty of the world, but, alas, the main protagonist is too pressed for time to take it all in. That is, until love changes his course.

This version of Around the world in 80 days will remain to be (to me) the ultimate –to be defeated- champion of Jules Verne’s original story.