Review – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)

Makers of big-budget effects vehicles take note: if you don’t include a script or interesting characters or something besides cinematic tricks, someday your movies will end up looking like this. As a historical artifact, it’s worth a look. If nothing else, it allowed the Williamson brothers to showcase some pioneering underwater cinematography. The story, on the other hand, should simply have stuck closer to Jules Verne’s novel. By the time Nemo (Alan Holubar) is painted up in awkward “brown face” and given a tedious back story, well, it’s just more than a silent production can bear. Mildly amusing