Review: Treasure Island Kids: The Mystery of Treasure Island – Treasure Island 3 – The Mystery of Treasure Island (2004)

Directed by: Gavin Scott | 82 minutes | adventure, family | Actors: Keith Adams, Beth Allen, Jack Hurst, Katherine Kennard, Joel Tobeck, Devon Wood

The mood in the holiday camp on the idyllic island is quite bad: archery is not going well, singing is only out of tune, inventions are likely to fail and there is a lot of quarreling among themselves. But then as if by magic the meter turns completely the other way and everything seems to work in an almost supernatural way.

This suspicion appears to be correct. Suddenly there is a large statue in the woods that reacts angrily or cheerfully to what the adolescents are doing and, for example, makes the earth shake if they do not want to believe that it is an image of the gods. The cause turns out not to be the image itself, but an alien who tries to complete his education about knowledge of the earth and the earthlings and communicates with people through the image. It is a kind of hippo listening to the name ‘Obi’ and in possession of a cute flying saucer. After some good pastries among themselves, the residents of the holiday camp join forces to get Obi out of the hands of the cruel Dr. Phillman (Katherine Kennard) and then release it to his alien home. Will she be able to do this despite the torture and other aggressive methods of Dr. Phillman and her helpers?

How the makers come up with such a lot of nonsense is actually quite clever, but also a bit tiring. They took ideas from quite a few films and then turned them into a strange kind of stew that is definitely not tasty, but the product of first-year students who have just moved in. To mention any of the ‘quoted’ films would in this case be an insult to the original. There are runaway teenage girls who worship the image of the gods like a kind of zombies and are not afraid to attack en masse those who want to talk to them about that strange behavior. However, they let go of this religious fanaticism as easily as it arose. There is a ‘mad scientist’ who only seems interested in shaking hair, beautiful indeed, head of hair and parading in leather pants and boots, but who cannot be suspected of any scientific insight. And so it goes on. Sadness at its best.