Based on a popular “graphic novel” (i.e., expanded comic book), the story brings together a group of fictional Victorian-era “superheroes” to save the world from evil.

“M” (shades of James Bond!), who appears to be Head of the British Secret Service, drafts H. Rider Haggard’s aging hero Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery) to head the group. Several of the other members have already been tapped: Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), who provides transportation in a Nautilus that you won’t believe; a (former?) criminal named Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran), who is using H. G. Wells’ “Invisible Man” potion; Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray (Stewart Townsend), he of the famous Picture; and an alluring lady chemist named Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), last seen vamping Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and now endowed with certain of her former “friend“‘s capabilities … and tastes. Along the way, they must also pick up Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Henry Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) — a situation in which they get two for the price of one, the second being a CGI-generated but nonetheless remarkably intelligent Mr. Hyde. Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, now an American secret agent, invites himself along for the ride. Even old “M” (Richard Roxburgh) turns out to be a character straight out of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — no, not Sherlock Holmes, but Holmes knew him: think “M”. Heck, even Nemo’s chauffeur, apparently a maritime type like his boss, seems to be someone Herman Melville might have invented (“Call me Ishmael!”).

The authors have taken certain liberties with the characters. We are told that “Africa will not permit Allan Quatermain to die,” and the end of the film seems to imply that this is true; yet, though it’s been a long time since I read it, I vaguely remember that in the end of Haggard’s “Allan Quatermain” the character does die. I don’t think anybody ever had Mrs. Jonathan Harker doing the stuff she does in this film, even Fred Saberhagen, who has made use of her in his “Dracula” pastiches. Nor, I think, did Mr. Hyde outweigh a half-ton rhino in the original Stevenson story.

Another problem with the film (I think) is that younger viewers, and even older ones, will not be carrying with them all the necessary connotations associated with the characters. How many of today’s under-twenties have more than a vague idea of who these people are, or were? Most will know Tom Sawyer, I expect, but for the rest they will largely be familiar with the names, but not the identities, of many, and of some not even the names (Dorian Gray? Mina Harker?) It might have been better to make a contemporary League of Extraordinary Persons, with heroes and heroines from the fiction of the 20th century (James Bond? Peter Parker? Clark Kent?), people with whom the viewer can identify. Unfortunately, I suppose that copyright considerations would make this impossible.

It’s kind of a fun romp, but hardly great literature.