Around the World in 80 Days (2004)

There is a particular kind of 2004 studio product that arrives with a balloon, a steam engine, and no agenda whatsoever, and Frank Coraci's loose pass at Jules Verne is a fine specimen of the type. An international co-production with a genuinely international cast, it hands Jackie Chan and Karen Mok the Chinese roles and Cécile de France the French one, arrangements that feel less like a casting statement than simple arithmetic for a story about circling the globe. The diversity is baked into the itinerary. Nobody pauses to congratulate themselves for it, which is its own modest virtue.

The faint progressive signals here are faint indeed. Monique La Roche is a capable painter who joins the expedition on her own terms and declines to become Prince Hapi's seventh wife, though she remains a companion on someone else's journey. Lau Xing reclaims a stolen Jade Buddha for his village and the villain deploys colonial authorities in India, gestures toward empire that the film never bothers to examine. Lord Kelvin is a stuffy traditionalist and an institutional snob, not a critique of capital. Fogg's eccentricity reads as quirky-inventor coding, not neurodivergence. There is no environmental message, no body-positive messaging, no LGBTQ presence, and the historical anachronisms (the Wright Brothers, chiefly) are comedic license rather than reinterpretation. The film lectures no one. Its morals about trust and friendship arrive via slapstick and are gone before you can object.

What remains is a $110 million bauble that lost money and earned a Razzie nomination for its trouble. It is amiable, weightless, and innocent of ideology. We classify it accordingly, with the mild satisfaction of a sommelier identifying a wine that turns out to be fizzy and forgettable. A book adaptation, loosely speaking. Barely even that.