Idiot-Deluxe
This one's worth watching once. "Around the World Under the Sea" is somewhat distinctive and unique, yet at the same time below average in most respects. It's strong suits are the striking underwater photography and it's ample serving's of unintentional humor that it frequently dishes out at it's viewers. When watching this goofy movie you're never any more then 8 to 10 minutes away from yet another ridiculous eye-rolling implausibility; where the laws of physics don't apply and when convenient for the plot pseudo-science intervenes and saves the day, time and time again. There must be a solid 10 or 12 extreme implausibilities in this movie (i.e. making it up as they go along), but that's also part of the reason why it's a fun film to watch. With all the ridiculous, unrealistic and illogical moments that this movie packs, it's rarely, if ever, dull. "Around the World Under the Sea" is one of the ultimate examples of high-tech being used in the most unrealistic of ways, completely by the whim of the writer and director - and you know what, because of such creative license it's often HILAIROUS! By the looks of it I don't think they hired a single technical adviser, when they made this flagrantly unrealistic underwater adventure farce, if they did they turned a deaf ear to them.Lloyd Bridges stars along with several marginal actors, including the "gold paint chick" from Goldfinger Shirley Eaton; also the ever versatile Keenan Wynn and a few other no-namer's. Wynn's character has to have one of the most unusual and entertaining entrances ever seen in any movie (watch the movie and see what I mean).One thing I noted is, I could have sworn I heard some music that sounds as if it where lifted -directly- out of the movie "Jaws"; but this movie pre-dates that (infinitely better) movie by 9 or 10 years. Did John Williams see this movie and takes notes? That's another thing, occasionally the soundtrack sported some provocative and effective music, which is often a strong-point in underwater films."Around the World Under the Sea" is just flat-out ridiculous and illogical nonsense from start to finish, which I don't think was the intent of it's creators at all, because you often get the feeling that they were striving realism - but fail.I must say that if you Do Not take this movie with any seriousness, you'll more than likely enjoy it, thoroughly. I know I did.
simnia-1
All those reviewers who disliked this film are largely correct: this film is largely geared toward boys, it's unrealistic, the science isn't sound, the acting might be considered weak, some effects are weak, and so on. But I still love it. So what are all those reviewers missing? Well, it turns out there is a lot more to a film than just plot, acting, effects, soundtrack, and realism. Here's what negative reviewers are missing: This film accurately depicts a Utopian lifestyle of sorts, even in today's world. It fires the imagination. Imagine going on a round-the-world tour aboard a glass-ported submarine with elite scientists, an elite engineer, a beautiful blonde lady, being the first to explore new parts of the underwater world, playing chess (and winning!) against a state-of-the-art computer, going on a high-tech treasure hunt, working with state-of-the-art equipment, saving lives around the world due to your efforts, interacting with sea animals (via dolphin communication), and incidentally having adventures along the way. I can't think of *any* other underwater film, old or new, that realistically captures this feel of the ideal of living underwater as this film does. ("The Core" (2003) comes close to capturing the same cozy feeling of a state-of-the-art ship manned by elite scientists, but that was underground, not underwater.)Films like this offer a visionary ideal for living, especially in this modern age where some people really believe that hedonism and materialism are the ultimate good, and that intellectualism and science are to be ridiculed and avoided since being "cool" is antithetical to intellectualism. The film also has some decent humor, and a nice, realistic mix of sexism and promotion of women's equality.There are numerous other likable things in this film. The underwater scenery is beautiful, Shirley Eaton is beautiful, the equipment is cool, the inclusion of a chess game is terrific, the capturing of the daily submarine routine (planting sensors, playing chess) is great, and the constant presence of science provides an intellectual atmosphere.Also, each the characters is likable in his/her own way. I especially liked Hank Stahl, whose mature insights into the ugly side of human nature are standard nowadays, and he is about the only character who is not foolishly chasing after Maggie the entire time. Also, although I'll admit it's puerile, I loved the guinea pigs, even though they were probably included just for humor and for young viewers. I even bought some guinea pigs as pets for the first time in my life as a result of re-watching this film as an adult!There are a number of coincidences throughout that were probably accidental, but are either charming or humorous, depending on your taste in '60s movies and television: (1) a brief, repetitious, 2-note, Jaws-like musical theme in one underwater scene of the Hydronaut; (2) an UNCLE communicator-like 2-tone beeping from an alarm that goes off while David McCallum (Illya!) is in the scene; (3) a spherical sub streaming yellow dye, reminiscent of James Bond in the final underwater fight sequence in "Thunderball"; (4) a helicopter rescue of floating survivors at the end, reminiscent of the rescues at the end of "Thunderball" and "You Only Live Twice"; (5) entering into a briefing room where a monotone-voiced narrator is speaking, reminiscent of Number 1's briefing in "Thunderball."Some other delights for '60s fans are: (1) footage of the J. Neville McArthur Engineering Building at the University of Miami, with its charming, white waves facade; (2) Lloyd Bridges incessantly leaping into the water to try to be a hero at every opportunity, usually without enough air or without proper equipment, "Sea Hunt" style.The chess match alone deserves some comment. You could view the inclusion of chess in the film only as an appeal to young adolescent males, but then you would be overlooking the Conshelf II underwater habitat of 1966 as depicted in National Geographic magazine, which had one well-known photo of two men playing chess next to a porthole with fish swimming outside. That photo, in turn, probably inspired the scene from the EPCOT ride Horizons that had two men playing chess beside a porthole in a futuristic underwater habitat. And that's not to mention the HAL-Bowman chess game aboard the spaceship Discovery One in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). There is something about chess that is a good match with futuristic living quarters. Maybe it's the heavy intellectual component in both the game and the design of any such habitat, or maybe it's the contrast of ancient with futuristic (or should we say "hypermodern"?). Also, inclusion of the computer chess program in the film was an interesting, realistic, and historically significant. Even today online chess players on Yahoo often get caught cheating when they resort to their home chess computers for suggested moves, which is against the rules, so that twist in the plot was ahead of its time. Also, it wasn't until the 1980s that chess programs became strong enough that they could reliably beat most human players, therefore when Hank Stahl won the chess match even when Dr. Volker used a computer against him, that was realistic and ahead of its time.The late '60s, despite its problems, was beginning to approach an ideal that was captured extremely well in this film. Everything from the pervasive white color of equipment (such as in the sub interior, ships, and helicopters) that gave a sense of cleanliness, to the orchestral score, to the constant scientific background (which was also prevalent throughout Disneyland in that era), to a simultaneous acknowledgment of women's strengths and weaknesses, gave a sense of progress, community, and balance of the physical, emotional, and intellectual. It shows us a paragon of human society that is realistically achievable. Acting skill or realism of the non-decompression scenes is irrelevant to this bigger vision.
Neil Doyle
If the murky photography shown in this short subject with clips from AROUND THE WORLD UNDER THE SEA ('66) is any indication, the bad comments from others on the feature length version of the film are more than vindicated.In fact, the color photography is murky whether photographed above or below water and the narration is weak. We get a glimpse of an underwater world from a picture-making expedition that had men scouting locations from the Bahamas to Australia. I'm sure they had a more interesting time than these film clips reveal.A few brief shots of LLOYD BRIDGES, SHIRLEY EATON, KEENAN WYNN and BRIAN KELLY are all we get of the actors involved, while most of the time is spent telling us how dangerous the expedition was for combat divers and their underwater equipment, with camera crews swimming among dolphins, barracuda and even sharks.Poorly photographed, it hardly whets one's appetite for seeing the feature film.
