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Fogg Report

From: <Rfbagby~at~aol.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 16:23:57 -0400
To: jvf~at~gilead.org.il (Jules Verne Forum)

As our esteemed colleague Brian Taves pointed out this week, after a century of Verne cinema there is little that has not been done sometime before. Even Kung Fu Verne has a precedent, the Chinese-German version of TRIBULATIONS OF A CHINESE GENTLEMAN giving its hapless fugitive a maidservant able not only to kick and chop but to levitate objects through concentration. What follows are purely some of my own impressions of where "the Jackie Chan version" of 80 DAYS fits (or doesn't) into the film corpus.Like many other 80 DAYS adaptations, this kicks off with the bank robbery (of the Bank of England, not the now defunct Baring Brothers.) Comical police pursuit of the thief causes him to change clothing and appearence until, recognizable as Jackie Chan in a suit, he stumbles into the home of inventor Phileas Fogg just as the latest in a series of valets quits due to Fogg's tendency to use his servants as guinea pigs for his gadgets. Chan is thus able to pass himself on Fogg as a pre-emptively hired new valet (
and willing guinea pig, since the gear helps conceal him from the police.) A key difference in this version is that what Chan stole is a single McGuffin -- a jade Buddha sacred to his village stolen by evil female warlord General Fang. The warlord's Chinese henchmen the Black Scorpions fill the pursuing role in this film, and China is the trip's true climax. (The USA is reduced to only 3 sequences -- San Francisco, a desert encounter with the Wright Brothers, and a fight among the pieces of the Statue of Liberty in NYC -- perhaps in part because Chan had already "done" the Old West in SHANGHAI NOON.)The next major change is replacing the Reform Club with the Royal Academy of Science. The villain of this film is its head, Lord Kelvin, who is stuffy (introduced as annoucing that the inventor of what audiences will recognize as a Slinky toy has been institutionalized), hypocritical (later he's seen playing with that very toy), corrupt (in a plot probably borrowed from Chan's SHANGHAI KNIGHTS he's conspiring wi
th the warlord General Fang to cause British intervention on her behalf in China), complacent ("Everything has already been invented!"), and abusive (his mistreatment of henchmen causes them all to turn on him in the end.) The bet with Fogg now has as its stakes Fogg renouncing inventing if defeated against him taking Lord Kelvin's place as "Minister of Science" if victorious -- and it's stage managed by Jackie Chan who realizes this is "the fastest way to China".Jackie Chan is not the first Passepartout to get top billing if one counts THREE STOOGES GO ROUND THE WORLD IN A DAZE (which in many ways is the natural comparison work for this version.) His martial arts action is of course the center of the movie, and he is presented as a figure while seemingly comical is also larger than life. When on the train in India he tells the story of a martial arts family, the Ten Tigers , Fogg dismisses it as legend, only to later learn this is actually his servant's real clan (led in one of the cameos by another martial
 arts icon, Sammo Hung.) A small boy on that train had pointed out that An 80 Days Circumnavigator would seem equally legendary to some.Phileas Fogg as played by Steve Coogan is a clueless recluse (an intentional distinction from the unflappable David Niven version.) Although Jackie Chan's Passepartout identity is forced on him by Fogg's "only hiring French valets", Fogg is comically unaware that Chan cannot really speak French, and often conned throughout the film by Chan and others. When news of the wager causes crowds to surround his house, in horror he tries to hide ; when a woman adds herself to the trip, he proclaims "This is what happens when one leaves home -- one meets PEOPLE!" Although his inventor role makes him the force of progress as opposed to Lord Kelvin, most devices seen are either 'cool' (rollerblades instead of merely rollerskates) or comical (a clapper-type switch for his lab's electric lights which Chan keeps accidentally setting off.) When in China he realizes he has been duped by Cha
n, he is somehow able to make it alone through the Middle Kingdom (a shot of him walking the Great Wall is probably meant to contrast with a scene of Lord Kelvin planning to demolish the landmark the better to mine jade concessions). But in San Francisco he is again immediately gulled of all his money and reduced to begging in the street, at which he is pointedly inferior to panhandler Rob Schneider (getting punched out by the film's director Frank Coraci in the helmer's own cameo.) When in New York Jackie Chan is willing to sacrifice himself against General Fang so Fogg can succeed in the trip (and thus replace the evil Lord Kelvin), Fogg's epiphany is that he goes back to try and save Chan -- and although his physical acts fail, the punchline is he still "saves" Chan when the manual of household rules he'd given his servant stops a fatal blade.Since Jackie Chan is already the exotic Asian, Auoida is replaced by Monique La Roche (Cecile De France.) That she is an aspiring artist comes to little -- introduce
d as appearently exhibiting with Van Gogh and famous Impressionists, it turns out she is a coat check girl who slipped one of her own works into the show. Even more telling her portfolio includes that icon of kitsch, Dogs Playing Poker (signficantly Fogg's criticism is not aestthetic but that it's unrealistic.) Although her stated reason for joining Fogg & companion is seeking artistic inspiration, nothing develops from this (that the dissolves between film scenes are animated made me wonder if she'd prove the "illustrator" of this movie), nor from her carrying around a harsh newspaper review of her work. That she is French is slightly more important, seeing through Passepartout's bogus ethnicity and blackmailing him into helping her join the trip -- at one point Chan tries claiming to Fogg she is a distant relation. This fictive kinship is confirmed when Fogg, realizing Chan duped him and Monique was complicit, quits both of them in China. When down and out in Frisco, finding her artwork of a human in flig
ht causes him to repent this, whereupon by screen logic Chan and she appear (having followed him from China.) Fogg and she are supposed to be meant for each other as both "dreamers" about flight, so when (in this film's signature moment and attempt to top Todd's balloon) the final leg of the trip is in a flying machine both are ecstatic.Of Verne's original quartet, Fixx is the most reduced since the Chinese assassains fill the main pursuer role. Inspector Fixx here is a bumbling victim of slapstick by both good guys and bad, most significant for realizing "Fogg's valet" is the bank thief (and thus causing Lord Kelvin to assume as in the book the wager was a ruse -- closer to the mark this time.)The new villain, General Fang, is a Dragon Lady figure of pure fantasy (pretty literally -- she spooks her British allies by disappearing whenever they take their eyes off her.) Tellingly, she is absent from the main martial arts battle of the Ten Tigers vs. the Black Scorpions in China, and comically unkillable in h
er own clash with Chan in NYC (knocked out by the Good Woman, Monique.)Although the "phantom day" is still nominally the finish, it comes third after two earlier climaxes (Fogg's flight, then Queen Victoria arriving to bring down Lord Kelvin) and is thus overwhelmed.Overall this strikes me as a parody without a direct model (which was also my reaction to SHANGHAI KNIGHTS), taking the Verne formula as well enough known to riff from, but usually going for low comedy (Victoria's intervention turns out to be because she bet 20 pounds on Fogg herself, for instance.)If not one of the great films, neither is this one of the worst Verne adaptions I've seen either.Ross Bagby
Received on Sat 19 Jun 2004 - 23:24:30 IDT

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