Le Voyage fantastique du capitaine Drake

1) The accents were cringe-worthily bad. I wasn't sure if I was listening to Cornish, Irish, Spanish or Klingon. The lead actor, particularly, was perfectly capable of putting all four into his lines and randomly mixing them up.

2) Rarely will you see an American "period" film which does anything but recklessly re-write history, usually to the detriment of the country or people it targets (bitter that America doesn't have one?). This is among the worst for that crime, but take a look at the writer and director and you cannot, surely, be surprised.

3) Considering it was made in 2009, I was under the impression I was watching something from the 70s. Poor acting on a scale as bad as "Land Of The Giants", poor story and even worse editing.

Well, I don't make a habit of watching television, and I certainly don't necessarily expect "fine art" when I DO. I was really looking very much forward to this and then rather disappointingly, fell asleep after about ten or fifteen minutes. But the part that I saw was exactly the lighthearted, entertaining fantastical fare I was expecting. I already KNEW from the ads that it wasn't intended to be a non=fiction piece and that it featured lots of CGI and special effects.. this is precisely what I was hoping. As to those who nitpick about "poor acting" and what have you, I will look forward very much to seeing YOUR efforts on the big screen very soon. My only regrets are that I wasn't able to see the whole thing, that I can't find any more listings or showings of it, and that it doesn't appear to be available on DVD yet.

This SyFy Channel TV movie is an attempt to mix the life story of Sir Francis Drake, that heroic Brit who defeated the Spanish Armada, with some old-fashioned fantasy heroics along the lines of a Sinbad movie or JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. The resulting concoction is a silly mess of bad acting, poor plotting, and the usual excruciating CGI effects that the SyFy channel deliver.

I wanted to like this film, I really did. I love all the old Harryhausen movies so something made as a tribute to them sounded good. Unfortunately, THE IMMORTAL VOYAGE OF CAPTAIN DRAKE is just too cheap to really work. The ships and sets are never convincing and the hammy actors in support are very poor indeed. Adrian Paul is awful too, particularly his broad farmer's accent which keeps drifting all over the place and had me cringing every time I heard it. The usual gamut of sea monsters and basilisks and the like turn up at every opportunity but the action is schlocky and will only be enjoyed by those in a very forgiving mood.

I just watched this movie, and it was great, especially thanks to the awesome Adrian Paul. He was FUNNY, in this role, which was so different than the serious Duncan MacLeod from his fantastic show, 'Highlander'. I was pleasantly shocked to see that he hasn't seemed to have aged a single day since Highlander. (He'll be 50 in May...he looks 35!) It was great to see him sword-fight the badguys, and just so cool to see him in the role of pirate. I hope that there's a second movie, as the ending was left open. You could really tell that Paul had fun filming this movie. The only oddity was that the girl playing his daughter looked much too old to possibly BE his daughter, because Paul looked so wonderfully young! LOL!

I wasn't expecting much watching The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake, but got a little better than I expected. I hate most of the SyFy originals, but found this one of their more tolerable efforts. The costumes and locations are great, the editing is a cut above the choppy feel I've often seen, the music score is grandiose and often epic, much better than the sluggish and over-bearing scores of most SyFy movies, the sword-fighting is decent and not as clumsy as I thought it would and the performances from Adrian Paul and Wes Ramsey. The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake does have its flaws though as well, namely the artificial-looking effects, the stilted and rather trite dialogue, scenes that aimed to have a tongue-in-cheek vibe but came across as lacking verve like the Turkish chase, clichéd characters and some of the other actors mumble through their lines. The story was a good idea to go on and had moments where it was crisply-paced and exciting, but others where it was rather dull and predictable. In conclusion, uneven but compared to other SyFy efforts it is reasonably entertaining. 5/10 Bethany Cox