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| Jason And The Argonauts |
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  (5/10)
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Runtime: 104 |
| Public Rating: 8.12 (17 votes) |
Director: Don Chaffey |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Fantasy/Adventure/Kids |
Year: 1963 |
| Writer(s): Beverley Cross, Jan Read |
| Reviewed by: Vadim Rizov |
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Jason And The Argonauts had writers firmly acquainted with this kind of movie, a producer who made a career out of Harryhausen films and a director known for FX-movies (Don Chaffey, of course, was responsible for One Million Years B.C.). And yet it hasn't aged nearly as well as Harryhausen's masterpiece The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, which had a slightly more mature writer, Ken Kolb, who wrote for "Wild Wild West," a show with a great sense of fun, same as the movie. By contrast, Jason And The Argonauts feels like nothing so much as a marital dispute with FX. Although we do have the active protagonist of Jason (the unknown and gratingly masculine Todd Armstrong), the real story here is the spat between Zeus (prolific but unknown Niall MacGinnis) and Hera (future Bond girl Honor "Pussy Galore" Blackman), who treat the story as a board game. It's the battle of the sexes - plus dueling skeletons!
For all its narrative faults, the movie looks good - it was, after all, shot in Italy, though that isn't really where Jason went. Issues of geographic accuracy aside, the story follows Jason through his adventures to get the Golden Fleece and no further -
his vengeance on King Aeetes (former Royal Navy Commander Jack Gwillim), who killed his relatives, must wait for another day. On his quest, however, he does encounter a panoply of effects, most notably a moodily sinister bronze Titan, and most famously seven fighting skeletons, who emerge from the ground quite impressively but who otherwise haven't aged quite well. For what it's worth, Harryhausen's effects are better integrated into this film than the earlier one. An encounter with a giant Jupiter is genuinely eerie.
This movie made me restless. I kept waiting for the pace to pick up, but it never did. Unlike its faster-paced predecessor, Jason And The Argonauts moves rather slowly. Worse, the dialogue is dull and heavy rather than fanciful and functional. A love interest is inserted rather late into the film, to the derisive cheers of the audience I was among. The acting is the work, mostly, of actors trying very hard to earn that meager paycheck. So while, as Variety used to say, tech credits are top-notch (lest I forget, the cinematography is gorgeous), the film itself isn't nearly as entertaining as it should be - or as The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad.
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