The Three Investigators and The Secret Of Skeleton Island (2008)

Talking to a family friend about movies that he had watched during the Christmas period,I got told about a family film that he had recently tracked down,which was an adaptation of a huge adventure series of children's books by Robert Arthur, Jr.Being keen to start my movie viewing year off in an easy-going manner,I felt that it would be a good time to meet The Three Investigators.The plot:After successfully solving an art forgery case,young investigating team Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw & Bob Andrews decided to pay a visit to a island in Africa,where one of the investigators dads is designing a theme park to be built on the island.Reading up on the history of the island,the gang discover that the island is meant to be cursed,due to there being some legendary treasure buried deep within it.digging around for details on the inhibitions of the island,the gang soon discover that mythical curses are not the only thing that they are up against.View on the film:Directed in a slick, brisk manner by Florian Baxmeyer,the screenplay by David Howard, Ronald Kruschak, Philip LaZebnik and Thomas Oliver Walendy transfer Robert Arthur's outdoor Adventure US novel to a hi-tech African jungle.Whilst the screenplay sadly fails to give any of the gang strong personalities,the writers do very well at capturing the spirit of the book,by mixing high-octane thrills (sky gliding!) with cave-searching mystery chills,with the writers also finding space to include a sweet message on anti- apartheid.Joined by a likable trio of kids,Langley Kirkwood gives a deliciously cheeky performance as Tom Farraday. Initially appearing to be rather charming,Kirkwood soon shows that in Farraday,The Three Investigators may have met their match.

Director Mr Florian Baxmeyer portrayed the Book of Robert Arthur successfully on this Movie.Screenplay was nice written by David Howard.I'm a big Fan of "Three Investigators" Book series. In our country this series recognized by Rakib Hasan. We called it " Tin Goyenda - Kongkal Deep" On this movie acting of 1st Investigator was brilliant, also others did great too. Music was just great. They used some rural songs of South African territories. We didn't saw any Special effects on this Movie. No horror & nudity. 100% for kids and Family Movie. Personally i want's to say Casting wasn't good enough. Three investigators weren't brave although it was described in book they were very brave. Dialogue wasn't good enough. I wanted more thrilling scenes on this movie, I had expected more from this movie. I can say , it was nice try. We expected more adventures from movie. We didn't found nothing ! For a tight budget movie crews were did great. Thanks for their efforts on this movie. Sorry, 5 out of 10!

the film would have a US theatrical release - don't you think. Saw the film, loved the books as a kid, but please what what this all about? Nothing of the flick reminded me of the lovely books. The kids are too polished, too wise, too boring - that is not the acting, but the weak, weak script they had too suffer trhough. Why South Africa? I can tell you, cause it is cheap to shoot there, nothing else. The film was a major disappointment in Germany (box office). Generated some 900.000 viewers - tha'ts not enough to recoup the investment of nearly 10. Mill Euros in budget. No idea, why they made another one. Too sad, great promise, weak, very weak result.

Just saw this one in a preview screening at the Hamburg Filmfest. As a long time fan of the early books and audio tapes which have been a great success here in Germany for decades, naturally I had certain expectations for this first movie version of a Three Investigators story. And by "certain" I mean, I already knew this was the first big international movie from Studio Hamburg (the production company) and so I could imagine the style to be quite a commercial as-mainstream-as-possible one. After all, it's a franchise product, isn't it? Well, I was not wrong.To all the fans: Don't expect an authentic Three Investigators movie. Okay, there are some nods to the old school fan community, but they're sparse and don't really go with the flow, and then that's about it. It's a decent movie for children (although not really appropriate for the very young ones, some scenes may be too frightening), and it still can be interesting for the parents or of kind of an academic interest to the usual grown-up fan, but there are too much points where the protagonists just don't behave like the original characters would have. Also they don't really look that much as how the characters are described in the books. Bob doesn't even wear glasses, for whatever reason...It's very obvious the movie is designed for this target audience notoriously called "kids". Not children, that is, but kids. It could have been worse of course, at least the boys don't wave mobile phones around, wear baggy pants and listen to hip hop via iPods (only once it starts to get too silly when they pull an itching powder blowgun with even a laser pointer mounted on top!). The makers fortunately chose to display a setting which is quite timeless in appearance. But then they try just too hard to please by putting in some die-hardish action scene, some james-bondish, some mission-impossiblish and some indiana-jonesish stuff and even - how misguided could they get - ROMANCE! While in the original story the three boys become friends with another boy, here this is changed to be a girl (a decision obviously led by marketing considerations). And the first comment one of the boys makes when they first see her, believe it or not, is something along the lines of "Wow, what a hot chick!" Though the boys are displayed as very young ones, as young as one could possibly imagine the characters from the most early books. When the original Three Investigators met girls, they dealt completely different with these encounters. They simply had no business with love interests back then, they were serious detectives only concerned to their mystery cases! It seems the writers of the screenplay had a merely superficial understanding about what made the Three Investigators special from the start - or they were pressed just too hard for prostitution.By the way, the story has almost nothing to do with the original book episode of the same name. Besides the three main characters there are only two other persons which also appear in the original story (Peter's father and Faraday). The actual villain even turns out to be one from completely different episodes. While the elements which make up the case are typical for TTI stories mostly, it all comes around just too forced, too artificial. At least for the fans, I guess. For everyone else the movie might be a nice family fun ride (the children in the audience laughed at all the moments where it was intended), but then nothing particularly special. The only thing that would make this movie stick out, namely it being a TTI adaptation, of all things is what doesn't work that well. But on the other hand, to make this work well might be an impossible enterprise, considering how hard core the fan community has become over the many years and how diverse and inconsistent the TTI universe has become anyway.We'll see how the producers will pull off the next installment, which they said is already underway...