Tarzan and the Lost City Reviews

Goofy, retro hijinks featuring an articulate ape-man and a feisty Jane. The year is 1913, and Tarzan (Casper Van Dien) is living the life of an English gentleman and preparing to marry the lovely Jane Porter (Jane March). But a vision of his childhood home being destroyed sends him racing back to Africa, where he finds adventurer Nigel Ravens (Steven Waddington) preparing an expedition to the lost city of Opar. Because the ancient city is sacred to his friends, the Nuba tribesmen, the lord of the apes allies himself with them against the plundering Europeans. The movie's pretensions to being "a new Tarzan for a new generation" are pretty much summed up in the scene in which the dastardly Ravens bellows, "Welcome to the 20th century!" as he prepares to slaughter a native sentry at the gates of Opar (which, by the way, looks an awful lot like an exotic discotheque). Of course, the man promptly turns into a giant cobra and scares the bejabbers out of Ravens' mercenaries, so an impartial observer might be forgiven for thinking this was the same old Tarzan, swinging his way thorough an exotic Africa of friendly elephants, mischievous chimps (like the one who steals Jane's dress, forcing her to tackle the jungle in her chemise) and mysterious medicine men with spooky powers. Van Dien nicely fills out his loincloth -- what there is of it -- and Jane March does her best to make Jane a scotch-drinking, cigar-smoking, pistol-packing feminist before her time. There's no sex and not much violence, just lots of scowling and threatening, so it's suitable for children. But they'd probably rather see GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE, whose silliness is at least deliberate.