Titre "français" (sic) DARKWORLD

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Self indulgent arty rubbish

Author: dan-is-grate from United Kingdom
13 May 2009
 

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

So the British public pays their money with the billions-to-one-chance of winning the National Lottery, and with shavings of that money, certain projects are funded. This film-students' masturbatory aid is one of them.

I really hope none of my entries to the lottery were used and were either won by a convicted rapist or used to build an opera house for millionaires to drink champagne in, because frankly, this film is and represents everything I hate about "modern" cinema.

Character-wise, we have a faux-suicidal "artist" who is merely a spoilt rich Londoner with mummy and daddy issues who rebels by playing "pill race" (taking an overdose then phoning an ambulance to see which one wins) on camera. As she consistently survives this, she submits the tapes as coursework at university.

Next, we have an unbearably wet, lovesick male lead who constantly whines about some girl who left him. Were he to display a little more indignation and admirable qualities we might have the slightest sympathy.

Then, we have the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder soldier character who provides the only watchable screen-time as his Rorschach rip-off in the "parallel universe" Meanwhile City. The opening 5-10 minutes are entirely in Meanwhile City which means they are the only watchable minutes before the (SPOILER ALERT) "it's all in his head" plot starts to become apparent.

In "Fight Club" it wasn't original. It just about worked because it was so tongue in cheek, but by "The Machinist", it is such a rubbish twist.

Honestly, what is it about British cinema? Why can we turn out nothing but arty rubbish, Pride and Prejudice clones or kitchen sink council estate films?

Those in film colleges and universities will have infinite fun picking its semiotics and themes apart and scoffing at poor people for not knowing what mise-en-scene means, but personally, I'd avoid this one.

I'm just glad my ticket was free, but if my lottery money was used to fund the film, I am genuinely sorry for being a part of bringing this abhorrent film into the world.

7 out of 17 people found the following review useful:

My eyes still hurt

Author: personal2004 from United Kingdom
24 April 2009

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I have been reading IMDb's comments for years now. Oddly enough I usually don't agree with most bad comments on a movie. We deal with one of the rare exceptions here. This movie, along with whomever believes that incoherent, uninteresting stories about deranged, suicidal and utterly boring individuals, is good...should be committed immediately. I mean come on, how dumb do the film-makers believe the audience is?! When the movie began I was actually excited (the views of Meanwhile City are just perfect), but after 20 minutes (yes I lasted that long) I wanted to stuff my eyes with popcorn and stab myself with a cola bottle.

The story telling was...bleh (no other word came in mind). The actual content was, utter rubbish to say the least. The ending...I mean who the hell would believe those people met there on purpose? I swear, if I was able I would have shot them all myself.

Save your time, your braincells and your dignity and avoid this at all costs.

7 out of 19 people found the following review useful:

Simply... This is just... Awful.

Author: midnyghtravyn
13 September 2009

This is probably one of the worst films I've ever seen. It offers no surprises to the viewer and by the end of it it left me wondering why I'd bothered watching it throughout. But I must admit that I was hoping, at some level, that it would be better. The characters are bleak and poorly played and I was left with an uneasy feeling of wishing them dead for the better part of the movie. Ryan Phillippe is the only actor in this movie that tried to make an effort. Even poor Bernad Hill, who proved himself as a worthy Theoden in LotR, showed little promise of a great actor in this half baked weirdness pie. And Eva Green played her usual harrowed eyed, junkie looking self in this film as she does in everything else. But apart from the script, the casting, the acting and the poor directing, the thing that really REALLY lets this film down is the substandard cgi. Finally, I will say that I admire the vision, and I can sense what director/writer Gerald McMorrow was aiming for, but he couldn't quite reach the finish line. I can't honestly recommend this movie to anyone.

0 out of 7 people found the following review useful:

Dark, depressing, rubbish!!

Author: haddesah from South Africa
21 May 2012

Dark, depressing, boring, psychological CR_P!! Goths and weirdo's will love it! Cannot believe the British spent money on this drivel!! Got half way thru and turned it OFF!! I would rather watch paint dry! Its absolute nonsense and makes no sense whatsoever! I nearly wanted to take a razor and slice my own wrists.... for goodness sake it seems like a whole bunch of people were on Valium and Prozac when they came up with this...put your money into making something interesting, as I know the Brits can, but many times they are producing some incredible dark and depressing and vulgar rubbish!! And I'm not wasting my time on any more on a review for it.... its a complete flop!!

30 out of 90 people found the following review useful:

Oh dear god.......

Author: species from United Kingdom
27 February 2009

This is one of those movies that Film Students will love, spending hours trying to decode the "hidden complexities of the story", in order to reveal the "true message of the director" (it's an attempt to make themselves feel superior to non-film students); well let me save normal people the trouble.. and use the quote "sometimes a cigar, is just a cigar" - or to put it another way "it is was it is". There's a fine line between creativity and rubbish, and this in my view is sadly the latter. Imagine you've got a faulty TV & it keeps switching every 30 seconds between Buffy and Casualty, and you get some idea of what you are in for. To be fair though, if the directors aim was to make the audience feel the same kind of despair and loss of will to live that the protagonist suffered from, then he certainly scored on this point. I certainly don't think I was the only person who tried to revert in to some kind of fantasy world, in order to try and escape from the present. There were yawns and giggles rippling through the cinema during the movie - not a good sign, and a guy walked past and said to me; "what the hell was that all about" - so no, it's not just my view I'm expressing here. It's actually left me wondering if the lottery film board paid for two different movies - neither of which they could afford to finish, so meshed the two together to make a whole one.

If you're looking for something creative and interesting, go see "push", or better yet, go rent V for Vendetta.

Just an additional note to the person who said "grow up" - YOU grow up and realise that not everyone in the world will like the same movies you do, and they have the same right to express their option as you do!!

16 out of 64 people found the following review useful:

Worst film I've seen since EDEN LAKE.

Author: joannaplestor from United Kingdom
4 March 2009

Saw this today and thought it was sophomoric, pretentious, incoherent, drivel. It is incredibly predictable and then the way the characters supposedly link together is a complete lie. There is NO connection! How did this get £6 million? It is baffling when the dialogue is unintentionally amusing, everything Ryan Phillipe says in his deep Clint Eastwood voice sounds like the man from the film trailer voice-overs. Some of the things he says are priceless. People at the screening I saw were laughing every time he opened his mouth. His mask looks like a pair of old Y fronts with you know what smeared on them. And that in a nutshell is my review! Oh and there is also an actually very disturbing, irresponsible subplot about suicide as art which is in very poor taste. Avoid!

5 out of 10 people found the following review useful:

Franklyn falls short, not very clever, very misleading.

Author: patwgiles from United States
30 March 2011

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Billed as having a story from parallel worlds that collide. Not so, the utterly fantastic (and I believe should have been a film on it's own) world of Meanwhile City resides solely in the heavily delusional mind of the "central" character. The characters Milo and Emilia have almost no bearing on the films core story, they only become relevant near the end when they become "innocent bystanders" in the single-sided pseudo-conflict between the characters David and his father Peter.

I believe that if Franklyn had been a story of two parallel worlds that crossed paths, and not simply a real world and a delusional world, then it could have been a truly great film.

6 out of 12 people found the following review useful:

A movie with a grand finale...

Author: trans_mauro from Brazil
6 July 2009

that fizzles like wet firework!

Oh boy! Franklyn is boring, beyond boring. As many other reviewers have already written, the film tells the of apparently unconnected four persons living in London, three in the present and one in the future.

In the film we learn at, a snail's pace, the story of these characters, which are totally and completely uninteresting. But, out of curiosity, I decided to watch (or should I say endure) the film until its anticlimactic end to learn how and why the lives of these four poor souls are connected. And it was a bust!

It is interesting what people consider art these days. As long as something is tortuous, tedious and unimaginative it is considered a masterpiece! Franklyn is another big waste of time. Next time I will go out and watch grass grow for two hours. It is more fun and rewarding.

9 out of 26 people found the following review useful:

worst movie I've seen this year

Author: mindrip from Romania
23 April 2009

It is not what you'd think it is if you see the trailer.

I am the kind of guy that enjoys both action and smart movies, even if they're not combined at all. I can also appreciate a good story, even if it's badly acted or with poor special effects.

In this movie the acting is great and the picture quality is awesome, but as a movie... an epic fail.

By the half of the movie, about 15% of the people in the theater left and at that point I realized I was still waiting for it to "begin".

To make the long story short, the movie is terrible, unoriginal and extremely boring.

Don't waste your money and time on this.

57 out of 90 people found the following review useful:

Nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is

Author: Neil Welch from United Kingdom
24 March 2009

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

It's not fair to criticise just for the sake of it, but it's not possible to state my criticisms without spoilering the movie big-time. So if you don't want to read spoilers, stop here.

We have four seemingly unconnected story threads. One concerns a man called Preest (Ryan Phillippe) wearing a full-face hood in a dystopic alternative reality place called Meanwhile City, where he expects to carry out an assassination. The second concerns Esser (Bernard Hill), travelling from Cambridge to London in search of his son. The third concerns Emilia (Eva Green), carrying out suicide attempts as a kind of performance art project. The fourth involves Milo (Sam Riley), moping around with all sorts of personal problems following his wedding not taking place. These threads limp slowly onwards with nothing much happening until the two-thirds mark at which point we finally begin to find stuff out (spoilers start here). We discover that Preest is actually Esser's son, that he is a mentally disturbed serviceman who has escaped from a mental hospital, killing someone as he did so, and that Meanwhile City is nothing but a highly detailed delusion. And we discover that Milo has had an imaginary friend Sally since childhood who helps him through bad times: played by Eva Green in a bad red wig, she has now put in a reappearance. Things come to a conclusion when Preest invades Emilia's flat in order to carry out the assassination of his father (who is someone else in Preest's fantasy) in the restaurant across the road. Preest shoots and wounds Milo (who has accepted that fantasy Sally doesn't really exist) and blows himself up in Emilia's flat. Emilia (who, of course, looks like Sally, what with Eva Green playing both of them) and Milo, both wounded (both physically and psychologically, see, I got that) stumble into each other's arms, the end.

I have no problem with movies which present narratives in fantasy and real worlds, where the former can be explained by reference to the latter (Wizard of Oz, A Matter of Life and Death etc.). Neither do I have a problem with stories where seemingly disconnected threads twine together by the conclusion - after all, if you track back any incident in real life to origin points in the lives of participants, then take those as individual starting points, you will end up with something which looks like coincidence.

My problems came from something rather more fundamental. Number one, the four stories simply weren't very good. For much of the film I found myself thinking "When these threads finally make contact with each other, the payoff had better be spectacular if it's going to justify sitting through this tedium." Well, the payoff was distressingly inadequate.

Number two, while I don't have any problem with coincidence per se, I do like my coincidences to be credible. The denouement here required three certifiable nutjobs (schizo soldier, suicidal art student, full-on imaginary befriender) to wind up in the same place at the same time for no reason other than coincidence. Pull the other one, do.

Number three, you could have removed Milo's thread completely and it would have had no effect on the rest of the movie. That shows how completely inconsequential it was in terms of narrative importance.

Heaven knows I'm not a very demanding film-goer - I'm easily pleased, and have thoroughly enjoyed movies which have come in for some heavy duty criticism. But I do like to be entertained and I don't like being bored. This film bored me and failed to entertain me and left me feeling distinctly unsatisfied. I got the impression that the film thought it was a great deal cleverer than I thought it was. I encourage potential viewers to read Will Wright's criticisms - a well-reasoned critique from someone who knows what he's talking about.

Bernard Hill was excellent: his character was boring. Eva Green was excellent: her character Emilia wasn't boring (Sally was, though). She was sexy and deeply worrying - she can be very scary. She was much more scary than Ryan Phillippe who left no impression on me at all. Neither did Sam Riley.

Oh, and who or what is Franklyn? I know Bernard Hill queried seeing the name on some document or other (with no explanation or clarification), but did I miss it being mentioned elsewhere?

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Wasting Time

Author: villard from United States
30 March 2002
 

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The 2002 version of "The Time Machine" is just the latest in a string of terribly disappointing Hollywood remakes that fall flat on their face despite extravagant special effects.

What a lousy, uninspired bland story, with no imagination. Why so totally rewrite such a wonderful sci-fi classic? Are today's movie audiences too hip for the H.G. Wells writing largely as is? The 1960 George Pal version told a much more endearing story, even with clunky low-budget effects, beach-party looking Eloi, and Morlocks that looked like Smurfs on steroids.

The 2002 version must have H.G Wells turning in his grave:

1. The idea that the time traveler is motivated by the desire to change the past and trapped in a time paradox is an old sci-fi cliché. This totally distracts from the love affair with Mara (what happened to Weena?!) that made the 1960 version so endearing. This sets an unfortunate and distractive tone early on that makes the whole movie dour. If Guy Pearce's character was so brilliant either he or his buddy Einstein would have realized the time paradox dilemma – not have it dawn on him 800,000 yrs in the future – from a Morlock no less, Doh!! What's wrong with time-traveling just for fun & adventure & curiosity -- as embodied in the 1960 version?

2. Only if you saw the first movie would you realize at all what Pearce was doing with the time machine when you first see it. The George Pal film carefully explains the whole weird idea of 'travel' though a 4th dimension.

3. The director goes out of his way to make Pearce's character look geeky, a worn out old stereotype of scientists. In the 1960 version Rod Taylor was a little nerdy too (at least around Weena) but managed to be swashbuckling, playful and charming.

4. Among the key themes of the 60's version -- abandoned in the remake -- is the idea that endless war leads to the bifurcation of humanity. Blowing up the Moon to destroy humanity is pointless -- and doesn't do much for science literacy. For over 4 billion years the Moon has suffered vastly more powerful asteroid impacts, which would make any nuclear device look like a firecracker. Yes, science fiction needs artistic license, but this is just plain dumb and meaningless.

5. Destroying the time machine is stupid too. Apparently our time traveler invented the neutron bomb to power this thing. Blowing up the machine to kill Morlocks is sort of a cop-out 'machina ex machina' Disappointingly, Pearce never comes back to the 1800s to tell his tale to his incredulous friends, a key part of the Wells story with the irony that in a week the time travels goes into the far future and back.

6. Having Morlocks running around in the daytime totally ruins H.G. Wells' wonderfully spooky, ghoulish portrayal of them as shadowy creatures of the night. A true cinematic opportunity lost. Also, Wells depicted the Eloi as frail and childlike. These guys in the movie looked like they could take on Morlocks, if they weren't such big baby wusses.

7. The one smart Morlock – kind of a bleached-out Star Wars Evil Emperor -- had potential, but is so lame and aloof he tells Pearce to take his machine and go home ?! Boy, what a dramatic high point! In the book the Morlocks steal the machine because they are so fascinated by it, and fight to keep it.

8. The goof ball hologram at the N.Y. Public Library is too much. It makes light of the idea of human cannibalism. the 1960 version simply had the "talking rings" that delivered a chillingly somber eulogy for humankind. Derailed evolution is serious stuff.

Its sad the wonderful effects in this movie can never make up for a weary contrived clunker of a script. Save the cost of a ticket & popcorn and go rent the DVD when it comes out (soon no doubt), at least you can fast-forward thought the dull parts, just like our time traveler.

89 out of 172 people found the following review useful:

Simon Wells Spits on his Grandpa's Grave

Author: Sten from Takoma Park, MD
29 July 2003

H.G. Wells is spinning. No doubt about it.

Really, this would have been a decent sci-fi/adventure movie, if it hadn't been based on a classic novel and directed by the author's grandson. I kept hearing about how this would be the definitive version of the novel. What resulted was a pathetic and simpleminded bastardization.

The novel is a great sci-fi story but what a lot of people miss when they read it (probably because they read it when they're very young) is that it's overflowing with social commentary. The Eloi and Morlocks are a satire of the class distinctions of Victorian England, and the overall message of the film is that EVERYTHING DECAYS AND DEGENERATES, a satiric jab at Victorian complacency and their belief that their civilization would last forever. There's no love story, no romance with a beautiful Eloi woman....in the novel, the Eloi are 3-foot-tall childlike beings with a mental capacity not far above that of an animal. The Time Traveler does befriend an Eloi woman but it's clear he thinks of her more like a pet, and anyway she's killed before the novel ends.

This movie first tries to give us a totally stupid backstory as to "why he wants to travel through time." The treacly romance and the Lessons He Must Learn are enough to make film fans vomit.

The journey into the future is punctuated by a future disaster. OK, not bad, but it would have had more punch if we had been allowed to see that mankind just generally degenerates, as in the book. More a reflection of the times, I guess, as the George Pal version had a nuclear war take place.

The general story? Ugh. A total misrepresentation of the novel. The Eloi are too competent and warlike. The Morlocks are too intelligent. The UberMorlock is an embarrassment, and there's no setup. He just shows up in time to be killed. Yawn.

Samantha Mumba does OK. Guy Pearce is one of my favorites but he often seems confused and in pain. (Reportedly he broke a rib while filming this.) He also looks unhealthy and overly thin, as if he had been ill for a long time before making this.

A sad, sorry film version of one of the world's classics. H. G. Wells deserves better....MUCH better.
 

5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:

H. G. Wails

Author: Andrew Jerome from Australia
5 May 2011

You have to stop and wonder how a film that was made 42 years before this one, based on the same book and with less dazzling special effects can be better than this one! The secrets of time travel will have been discovered, indulged in and rejected as boring before I see this spectacular disappointment and colossal waste of...time again. It's a listless, plodding, mumble of a film that gets so bogged down in special effects that it never comes close to capturing the adventurous spirit of the classic H.G. Wells story. The good news is that this journey might span 800,000 years, but it will only suck 90 minutes out of your life.

8 out of 11 people found the following review useful:

homogenized nonsense

Author: cinedream from Los Angeles, Atlanta
29 March 2002

After reading the novel which is about a one hour read, watching this film became a sad disappointing experience. Just as he did in prince of Egypt simon wells somehow managed to direct a script that took away all the drama and mystery out of its source material and turned it into this homogenized nonsense. Now I'm a sucker for cheese and camp but this movie made absolutely no sense. There was no joy in any of the performances or any humor. There were no thrills and that silly bookend with addy's character of filby throwing his hat in the air was the last hackwriting straw. I felt very violated when this movie was over and I still refuse to believe it was only 90 minutes it went on forever. I wondered how the studio and director could have OK'd such a lousy script but then my friend pitched the movie to me exactly as It was and I said wow that sounds great but what happened to the movie.

9 out of 13 people found the following review useful:

H.G. Wells must be turning in his grave

Author: rustik2 from United States
7 April 2008

If you have read the book, this movie is true to just about .. 0 aspects of the book. The only similarities between this movie and the book are that the future humanoids are called Eloi and Morloks, and there is a time machine. That's where it ends.

If you are watching this movie hoping for a faithful representation of the book on the big screen you will definitely be disappointed. I have not seen the 1960s version, but I have no doubt that it could not possibly be worse than this piece of garbage.

**May Contain Spoilers after this**

It is easier to count the number of things that it has in common with the book than the number of discrepancies. Here are some things that I was completely ticked off about:

1) The whole love-affair, driving him to go back into the past - It never happened.

2) He never went to the mid 2000's in the book. That was just made-up for the movie.

3) The Eloi can speak English. (WTF??) 4) The Eloi live on these odd structures that jut from the sides of cliffs overlooking a river. The book described them as living in marble palaces, in a lush, green, lightly hilly area.

5) There is no Sphinx-like structure.

6) There is no green palace. Instead, he re-discovers the museum he saw in the mid-2000s, and all of the electronics are miraculously still working fine after 800,000 some-odd years.

7) Instead of coming to his own conclusions about the societal structure of the future-world, the computer guy from the museum simply explains it all.

8) There is no Weena.

9) The Eloi and the Morloks are dark-skinned, not pale-skinned like they are in the book.

10) The time traveller's impression of the Eloi as being fairly stupid is never evident. They are in fact portrayed as just a tribal people.

The list goes on. There are only a couple of things that actually come close to representing the true story as laid down by H.G. Wells.

If you have read the book, I strongly urge you not to watch this garbage. And if you have not read the book, and you have seen or will soon see this movie, please - read the book. If H.G. Wells were alive today, he would never have let this absolute piece of garbage be published.

10 out of 15 people found the following review useful:

Somebody call an EDITOR!!! Interminable.

Author: Oak Owl from San Francisco Bay Area
28 November 2005

It's a Time Machine all right. It runs in "real time" for 96 minutes but it felt like 96 years. The first 20 minutes were utterly superfluous. Massive amounts of "dead" time throughout. What happened? When will something happen? Who cares? Apparently the film was made on a tight budget, I note for your edification the following: The Morlochs: nothing like saving a little money by reusing the sets and costumes from Lord of the Rings part I, hey? The "scary dude" in charge of controlling the Morlochs... The scariest thing these guys could think of was somebody wearing one of Gene Simmons: (of the band Kiss) old costumes??? Little-known fact: freaks of the future have perfectly manicured nails.

Save your money, save your time. Pass on this one.

21 out of 37 people found the following review useful:

Go read the book people! It's good for your brain.

Author: kate-brender from United States
29 March 2008

Worst. Movie. Ever. I can't believe they had to hire Jeremy Irons to give this piece of crap some credibility - and still failed. Did they think that if they stuck to the plot of the book that their target audience wouldn't be able to figure it out on their own? (probably). "Hey, let's make lots of things explode and give Mina big boobs, and have her speak in an adorably fake broken English. That'll make the morons watch." "But sir, that's not how the book went at all, I think we're mot being faithful to Mr. Wells' message." "F*ck it, we're going to the box office here, never mind some dead author's ideas on human nature. Also, let's add in Orlando Jones with some classic 'Black attitude' as a supporting character, and never mind the interesting conclusion to the book - Guy Pierce has to get some p*ssy at the end."

4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:

What an awful adaptation of a great classic

Author: TheKrimsonKing from United States
28 June 2008

This movie is a disgrace. How can you take one of the greatest science fiction stories of all time and turn it into some kind of half-assed love story. The entire beginning of the movie was not in the H.G. Wells story and didn't need to be. Also the Eloi were done completely wrong. They did build houses or form any kind of real society. They didn't care about each other at all. That was an important part of the story. The way they had formed a world that was without hardship or complex emotions. They were barely even aware of the Morlocks. I don't know why this movie was made the way it was but some stories should be told as they are or left alone.

6 out of 9 people found the following review useful:

Time Wasted

Author: John Frame (johnvframe@yahoo.com) from Brisbane, Australia
26 March 2002

Quite simply a very poor effort compared to the original (with the superior lead performance by fellow Australian Rod Taylor and tastefully kitsch effects).

Guy Pearce is really annoying as a slack-jawed ninny for the first part of the film. But this must have been just what the director wanted - or it would never have made the final cut.

The story line is tragically laughable - a significant part of our preview audience even laughed out loud as a woman was run down by a runaway carriage. I had to agree with them.

Jeremy Irons will be haunted to his grave for accepting his role and most of the audience will be haunted by the thought of the million and one other things they could have been doing with this part of their lives.

The only consolation is that it's comparatively short.

6 out of 9 people found the following review useful:

Don't waste your Money!

Author: Greg from Hartford, CT
22 March 2002

Ok, Basically, this movie was a grave disappointment. The movie lacked any concept of plot or moral. We went in, and simply waited for it to end... there was nothing gained by seeing it. It had a good premise, and a phenomenal budget to spend on special effects, but the movie overall was completely lacking substance. Despite some entertaining action sequences, and of course, the big Hollywood effects, there was nothing keeping me in the story. As shown in the trailer, there is nothing to inspire you to see what happens. It could have been more emotional and it could have been more consistent. The movie is an abomination of the original text, and an overall waste of time.

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Résumé
T.S. Spivet est un jeune garçon surdoué qui vit dans le Montana. Un jour il reçoit un appel du Smithsonian American Art Museum de Washington l’informant qu’il a gagné le prix Baird pour avoir inventé la machine à mouvement perpétuel. Sans prévenir personne, il décide de traverser seul les États-Unis à bord d'un train de marchandises en direction de la capitale avec seulement un télescope, quatre compas et le journal intime de sa mère. T.S. veut à tout prix recevoir cette récompense décernée par un jury qui ignore qu’il n'a que dix ans.

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http://jpjeunet.fr/

Cast
Kyle Catlett : T. S. Spivet
Helena Bonham Carter  : Dr. Clair, la mère
Niamh Wilson  : Gracie, la sœur
Judy Davis  : Jibsen, la sous-secrétaire du Musée Smithsonian
Callum Keith Rennie : le père
Julian Richings : Ricky, le routier
Dominique Pinon  : « Two Clouds »
Jakob Davies  : Layton, le frère dizygote
Robert Maillet : Giant Hobo
Amber Goldfarb : une serveuse à la réception
Lisa Bronwyn Moore : Judy
Rick Mercer : Roy
Richard Jutras : M. Stenpock

Production/Développement

Après Micmacs à tire-larigot, Jean-Pierre Jeunet ne voulait pas partir d'une idée originale pour son prochain film, préférant adapter une œuvre déjà existante. Il charge alors son « lecteur attitré » Julien Messemackers de lui trouver un roman à adapter. Alors que le réalisateur tourne une publicité en Australie, Julien Messemackers lui annonce avoir trouvé quelque chose de formidable : L'Extravagant Voyage du jeune et prodigieux T. S. Spivet de Reif Larsen, publié en 2009 aux États-Unis et en français en avril 2010 (NiL Éditions).

Ce roman intéressait depuis quelques années Hollywood et l'auteur Reif Larsen avait établi une liste de cinq réalisateurs potentiels : Alfonso Cuarón, Wes Anderson, Guillermo del Toro, Tim Burton et Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Ce dernier contacte l'auteur et lui fait part de son enthousiasme.

Le projet est officialisé en novembre 2011, après de longs mois d'écriture et de budgétisation. Le film est donc en partie financé par Gaumont. Le scénario est écrit par Jean-Pierre Jeunet et Guillaume Laurant, qui a déjà collaboré avec lui pour La Cité des enfants perdus, Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, Un long dimanche de fiançailles et Micmacs à tire-larigot.