What are the problems with this movie?

They tried to cast Matthew Modine as a low-budget Cary Elwes, and he failed miserably.

And Geena Davis could have used some voice acting before taking this role on. Her conversation with her father was the most horrible scene ever, just because he had a believable accent and she did not.

acronymphos love to have S.E.X.

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I can happily cope with the script, that everyone says is so bad -- and it certainly seemed pretty clunky at times -- but for me, the problem with the movie is a lack of energy.

This shows up in two ways: firstly, Harlin's direction is just ponderous and lacklustre. Despite all the action on-screen, none of the scenes has any zip to it. The whole movie's so stodgy and the scenes all move so slooooooooowly.

And the other lack of energy is between the cast. Geena Davis and Matthew Modine have no chemistry between them at all, so their banter just seems tedious. I quite like Geena Davis as an actress, so I don't want to blame her, but maybe the problem's mostly on her side, because she doesn't seem to have any chemistry or spark with anyone else either -- not with her father, or her uncle Mordechai, or her crew, or her monkey, or even with her uncle Dawg. (No wonder Langella was reduced to chewing scenery, just to make something happen in his scenes! And thank goodness he's got enough screen presence to lift their scenes for the both of them!)

The movie had some great set-ups in the story, but they were played out without any spark or sense of inspiration -- or even of knowing how to have fun!

I don't personally think PotC was a better movie, but it was more enjoyable for me because it knew how to be adventurous. (Mind you, we saw in PotC2 and PotC3 how ramping things up by more and more notches quickly becomes tedious in itself, and actually gets boring.)



You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

The casting.
Shouldn't have had a female lead for a boys action movie. At least not during that era. It was kind of ahead of it's time.

Having cast Geena Davis they should have bolstered it by getting a box office draw for the male lead and the villain. Two heavyweights. Like Mel Gibson for male lead and Sean Connery for the villain. That was absolutely critical since Geena wasn't a action draw. In fact she had never really been able to carry a film on her own before Cuttthroat either.

They really needed a handsome guy who could do comedy since Geena is kind of wooden and not comedic.

Even Stallone would have been good to get for either lead or villain since he would at least be a box office draw and had worked with Harlin on Cliffhanger.

Might have also helped if they had got a license to use the Disney Pirates of the Carribean for the title since nobody had any idea what Cutthroat Island was.

Other than that the movie itself is pretty good but the movie title/franchise isn't a draw and non of the leads are box office draws.

Harlin kind of got lucky with Die hard 2 (Bruce Willis) and Cliffhanger (Stallone). He should have just stuck to the formula. Even having both Stallone and Willis along with Geena Davis and this movie would have done well.