Movie Review: ADVENTURER: THE CURSE OF THE MIDAS BOX Feels As Long As Its Title
There's something adorably uncool at the core of The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box that makes me hesitant to discuss it with overt negativity. You can get some idea of what I'm talking about just from the title and promotional art. It's not just a kids film. It's a really nerdy kids film.
Think of The Adventurer as a kind of Da Vinci Code, or better yet Noah Wyle's The Librarian series, for children. Even though it is a period piece while those other examples are not, it makes a similar attempt at bringing forth excitement and adventure through inherently stodgy characters. That method can work in the presence of charm, but The Adventurer offers only a small amount of that sort of likability, most of it coming from its underutilized adult cast.
Sam Neill provides the film with a moderately entertaining villain, more fun the more he throws out subtlety and fully engages in his character's mustache-twirling nature. He plays a powerful guy who spends his time relentlessly searching for the fabled Midas Box, which can turn regular stuff like pocket lint and crumpled receipts into gold. Standing in his way are the combined forces of Michael Sheen's goofy rogue and a husband and wife team played by Ioan Gruffudd and Keeley Hawes. Rather than Librarians, they are members of a government agency concerned with the protection of important artifacts, which I guess puts them close enough to the Indiana Jones realm for this movie to not look too silly.
When the story stays with these characters, the possibility for entertainment exists. Unfortunately, the parents are abducted early on, leaving the plot to their children: A young wimpy-wimp and an adolescent who looks like the love child of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter's Sweeny Todd characters. Soon the wimpy-wimp gets abducted as well, and the whole movie rests on the Depp-Carter amalgamation's shoulders. His shoulders can't take it.
If I flubbed any of the story details in the previous paragraphs, it is because I was bored out of my mind. The Adventurer doesn't have a lot going for it in the first place, but its inability to raise any excitement is a killing blow. The film rarely wakes up, and when it does it's merely a generous bump on a very flat road. I sort of want to like a movie where Michael Sheen plays a roguish badass against a goofily evil Sam Neill, but The Adventurer makes it difficult, even with occasional dips into the supernatural.
In the end, this is a film for children, really sheltered children whose parents won't let them watch regular movies. There's a certain fun that comes with these actors (Lena Headey also shows up to give a more cartoonish version of her smile/scowl), but it's not really enough to keep The Adventurer from seeming like a TV movie you flip past without ever bothering to learn its name.
