aka Search For the Jewel of Polaris

• Directed by David Schmoeller
• Written by Adam Wohl
• Starring
  • Andrew James Trauth
  • Brianna Brown
  • Megan Lusk
  • John Duerler
  • Adrian Neil
• Produced by Vlad Paunescu
• Executive produced by Peter Locke and Donald Kushner (and Charles Band, uncredited)

Seeing how often the Kushner-Locke kidvids used the idea of modern American children transported back in time to castles (in order to justify their Romanian shooting locations), I got to wondering: How many of them are actually any good? So far, I’ve seen Teen Knight (1998), and I know The Excalibur Kid (1999) uses the same gimmick. If we drop the time-travel element, we’ve still got The Secret Kingdom (1997), Little Ghost (1997), The Incredible Genie (1999), Shapeshifter (1999), and Shadow of the Knight (1999) which all find some contrivance to get the child stars into a medieval castle. The median quality level here ain’t impressing me.

And buckle up, comrades, because it’s time for more of the same.

Hey! How do you think the painting would look if everyone touched it, missy?

Way back in the 17th century, there was a good magician named Darbin (Eugen Cristea), an evil nobleman-sorcerer named Falco (Adrian Neil), and the magical jewel of Polaris. Said jewel bears phenomenal power and such, and thus Darbin wants to keep it out of the hands of Falco, who of course wants to use it for all sorts of vague dastardly purposes. To forestall the reign of terror that Falco intends to bring about until he can get his hands on the jewel (and which point, well, he’d wage an even worse reign of terror), Darbin disguises himself as a portrait painter and magically traps Falco and his henchmen inside a painting of their (snicker) last supper. He then hides the jewel deep in a booby-trapped cave and disappears into the mists of history.

Cut to the present day. A Saturday, to be specific, and one on which Dad (director David Schmoeller) doesn’t have time to babysit his three warring children, so he drops them off at the local museum for the day. College-aged Kim (Brianna Brown) works there anyway, restoring paintings and whatnot; young teen Ben (A.J. Trauth) and preteen Casey (Megan Lusk) are pretty much sentenced to a day of quiet, temperature-controlled boredom. Curator Monty (John Duerler) — or Assistant Curator, most likely, as he’s working the Saturday shift — shows them some of the exhibits, including a mysterious painting of the evil Falco and his posse, on the wall next to a landscape of the village he planned to decimate. And that would pretty much be it for a boring Saturday…

…Except that a thunderstorm blows into town. Lighting strikes the museum’s lightning rods, knocking out most of the power, and electricity crackles around the picture frame, setting General Zod free of the Phantom Zone. Wait, no, same thing but different. When Ben wanders back into the room, he sees that the figures have all disappeared from the painting, and what’s more, smoke is rising from one of the chimneys in the village landscape further down the will. Baffled, he touches it, and suddenly he’s sucked in!

“Pie Jesu Domine *thunk*, dona eis requiem *thunk*…”

Not long after, Kim comes through the museum to make sure her brother isn’t up to mischief, and does the same thing. Now we’ve got brother and sister lying in a haystack in a medieval keep, with Falco and his gang riding toward them to finally find the jewel of Polaris! (Don’t try to figure out whether they’re actually been sucked into the past, or whether the village exists as part of a magical alternate reality that only exists inside the painting, okay? Because (a) neither option makes much sense, and (b) it doesn’t really matter.)

While Casey and Monte wonder where the other two have gone, Ben and Kim fall in with a Mutt-and-Jeff pair of castle scribes who fill in all the gaps about Falco, Darbin, and the jewel. It seems that Darbin has disappeared, and without his help, Falco will undoubtedly find the jewel. The villagers are milksops to the man, so it’s up to our fish-out-of-water brother and sister to find the jewel. Because without its power, it’s unlikely that they’ll ever make it back to their side of the canvas.

And what advantages do a couple of 2oth-century suburbanites have to help them in a Renaissance-era quest? Well, they have Ben’s rollerblades, but that doesn’t amount to much. No, what they really have is a walkie-talkie, and a pizza.

Rock me Amadeus! (I have no idea what I mean by that. I’m just amusing myself.)

Allow me to explain. Ben and Casey had a set of walkie-talkies to keep track of each other around the museum. Miraculously, they still work, even across the magical divide, and Ben soon lets Casey and Monte know of their situation.

He had also had a pizza coupon flyer in his hand when he crossed through the painting, and on its way through, the pizza photo became a real live pizza. This is arbitrary beyond belief, but it also gives the story impetus for the whole second half of the movie. See, after the initial tour of the museum and the recitation of the legend of Falco and Darbin, Casey had sat down and drawn her own picture of a good and powerful magician. So now, Ben has the great idea of having her stick her drawing up against the village painting, so the drawing will come through and become “real” on their side. All clear?

“Kneel before me, son of Jor-El!”

And this is where a movie treading the line between “mediocre” and “adequate” rides completely off the rails. “M the Magnificent,” being based on a child’s conception of a great wizard, wields sorcerous powers while wearing tennis shoes and a ballcap, and hands out business cards to everyone he meets. He also looks exactly like Monte (I’m going to guess that’s because he helped Casey stick the drawing to the painting). Truth be told, John Duerler is one of the two more watchable performers in this movie — far more so than leads A.J. Trauth and Brianna Brown — but his semi-juvenile Motormouth Lite routine meshes with the rest of the movie like chocolate sprinkles on beef jerky. And while Kim fades into the background, Ben and M go on their quest for the jewel, trekking through whole acres of land in search of the McGuffin to get them all home before the thunderstorm in the real world ends and the portal out of the painting closes.

I mentioned that Duerler was one of the better two actors; the other is Megan Lusk as Casey. I know; these impoverished productions rarely manage to cast a memorable adult actor; what are the odds that they would stumble upon an engaging child actress? But Lusk is bright-eyed and believable in her line delivery, and deserves to have been a much larger part of the movie than she ended up being, wandering the museum halls talking into her walkie-talkie.

“Ain’t I just KYOOT?“

I watched this movie, as I often do for these kidvid reviews, with my own four children who ranged in age from thirteen to three, and it’s a source of insight to watch which age strata react to which parts of the movie. (Especially if the movie has left my own demographic behind, and I’m bored to tears.) This one might have set a record; by the time the movie ended, no one of any age cared anymore; EVERYONE was simply waiting for it to end. Somehow, despite a story hook and production budget no worse than the other Kushner/Locke Canarom productions, this one managed to miss every audience target. A talent, I suppose, though not terribly marketable.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 1
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 2
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0