Treasure Island Kids: The Battle of Treasure Island – Treasure Island 1 – The Battle of Treasure Island (2004)

Directed by: Gavin Scott | 101 minutes | adventure | Actors: Beth Allen, Frank Brown, John Callen, Jack Hurst, Joseph Moore, Adele Pascoe, Randy Quaid, Sasha Tilley, Nicko Vella, Devon Wood

The movie ‘Treasure Island Kids: The Battle of Treasure Island’ is inspired by the book ‘Treasure Island’ by Robert Louis Stevenson, but is slightly less exciting than the famous example, just a little bit. The beginning is still nice in a London harbor in the year 1780. There is talk of an old treasure map and a hidden gold treasure of mythical size. Then we see a beautiful mansion in modern times where men dressed as pirates raid to retrieve a mysterious box containing the infamous treasure map from the fireplace chimney and finally we see the arrival of a group of reluctant teenagers on ‘Treasure Island’. A little confusing, but okay.

The story that follows after this nice start is quite chaotic and intertwined with incidents, so trying to tell what the film is actually about is by no means easy. There is an island where a huge treasure of gold is buried and a descendant of the infamous pirate Flint who tries to find and appropriate his ancestor’s treasure. However, the island is owned by two old people who, helped by their niece, try to prevent them from losing the island through debt. The old man has spent years trying in vain to find the gold treasure, and their niece has decided as a final rescue attempt that they should start a holiday resort for children. Their hopes seem to be dashed when it turns out that the kids don’t feel like going home except to get home as soon as possible.

It’s best not to want to delve too much into things like the old man’s inventions, which have no clear purpose in the movie other than just being there, nor the adolescence that is sometimes important and sometimes not and not in the fact that the parents can see everything that happens on the island via webcams, because the relevance of that…. Oh well, if you let everything come over you a bit resignedly, the film is fine as a background for a children’s party where it doesn’t matter when you watch or not, because you can’t lose the storyline anyway because of the complete lack of it and the game is so flat that even very young children can easily recreate the roles as a festive element.