Then special agent Larry Cross saw a very early screening of the live action TARZAN flick starring Casper Van Diem. And boy did ol Larry ummmm not like it. Whew!!! Here's his report:
When I was roaming LA last month, I managed to see an almost-complete version of "Tarzan and Jane" (weird, the credits still said "Tarzan and the lost city"). The exec who showed it to me said: "It's finished, but the director hasn't approved it yet."
The story (if you want to call it that): Bad guy wants to find the lost city of Opar, but Tarzan and Jane intervene.
My advise: Find the writer, and SHOOT TO KILL! It's not easy, but they managed to make the most boring, inept, stupid and lifeless Tarzan movie of all time - for a budget of 25 million dollars! Casper Van Dien and Jane March look like Donnie Osmond and Alyssa Milano, the pacing is completely off, and the ape suit in "Schlock" was better. Casper has the charme of a Rob Liefeld superhero, and I am pretty sure they cast him after they saw a Chippendales show. And come on: you can't cast Jane March ("The lover", "Color of night") and then keep her dressed for the complete running time. That almost qualifies as false advertising.
Isn't there anything good I can say? Well, Christopher Frankes score sounds nice, but at times seems inappropriate (shouldn't a score for a jungle movie be less synthetic?).
The camera manages to be in the wrong place all of the time, and only in a few action bits does the considerable talent of director Carl Schenkel shine through. Seeing this, it's a miracle that "Tarzan" with Bo Derek didn't get an Oscar. The movie plunders ERB for single snippets of the novels, but never creates anything coherent. The first half seems like "A day in the life of Tarzan and Jane", then it switches to "King Solomons mines", only to end like the first "Indiana Jones" movie. And it owes A LOT to "The blue lagoon" in the first half.
I mean, how difficult can it be? About 100 movies have shown that it's not so hard doing a decent Tarzan movie, if you don't give a crap for the source material.
What I did when I came out of the screening? I went into the next video shop and rented "Greystoke" and a Tarzan movie with Lex Barker. That saved the day for me.
I dare say it: this is worse than the TV series with Joe Lara and the other one with Wolf Larson. Stay cleer at all cost, even if (or especially if) you are a Tarzan fan.
