The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box

talents and ideas a bit wasted, the kids did not offer good enough performances to make up for it.

Bad effects are forgivable, bad pacing is not. The Adventurer does not live up to its name, committing the cardinal cinematic sin of being boring. Despite some high profile actors, Barnard (the young protagonist) lacks any form of charisma and the film noticeably drags during his scenes. The budget is apparent with an over-use of medium & full shots, denying the film the scope that the genre demands. The plot is filled with clichés, but this is the least of the film's problems.

All of these points are for Michael Sheen and Michael Sheen alone.

By this time in my "cinema life", I don't go in expecting some great things, or... things at all. That said, this succeeded in disappointing me. Three great actors, somehow pushed behind this, at best, mediocre performer, whom I tried excusing with the awful plot, but let's be honest - he's just that bad. A promising ancient mystery gets sidetracked by the "love story" of maybe the worst screen chemistry in the history. And of course, lets give a shout out to the gigantic number of plot holes.

It's just a tiny bit better than your basic straight to home video flick but that's the best I can give it. The plot is weak and it reeks of predictability. It tries to mend old school adventure with science fiction but it's not that fulfilling. The plot twist at the very end didn't work for me. I will say that I enjoyed the cinematography and old age production design. Michael Sheen and Sam Neill's talents could have been put to better use. 2.5 STARS

The plot was full of holes and the whole movie was lacking pacing. Michael Sheen was wasting his talent.

Whittle it down to just the Michael Sheen scenes where he jumps off things and the movie would be much better. Wouldn't hurt that that would get the runtime down to about three minutes.

Promising start that leads into large disappointment.