Leofwine_draca Apparently, Philip Jose Farmer's RIVERWORLD novels involve a fantasy world inhabited by souls of dead famous people. This Sci Fi Channel treatment of the story turns the whole concept into an outlandish B-movie with crushingly dull American characters and cheesy fight choreography. The whole effect is something you'd see in the likes of XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS instead of a proper, thought-provoking piece of filmmaking.The movie was made and filmed in New Zealand, so picturesque locations are about the only thing this has going for it. Everywhere else the acting is terrible; particularly Emily Lloyd, who has the fakest-sounding voice ever, like she's been dubbed. There's a lot of action here, but it's infantile in the extreme, done by people who have no clue how to stage properly exciting scenes. RIVERWORLD is a bore and barely worth watching, a generic mess no different from a hundred other such productions.

sculptagain-1 An obvious "Made For SciFi Channel" movie. Although completely controlled by clichés and incongruous chances, it is a quaint and cute movie. Many of the famous/successful sci-fi writers have used many of the ideas here for basis for their works. Riverworld is a conglomeration of many good stories. It is some what of a shame that many of the main characters (good and bad) had to be formed in such a hurry at the beginning. Most of the characters were performed well by the actors. Some were a bit silly - which only takes from a good story. Luckily the script was OK, scenery was super-excellent (New Zealand I guess), and very good 'store bought' props.

new_moon It could mean that I'm a bad person, but I enjoyed this movie.It probably helped a lot that I didn't read the books when viewing it. Without prior expectations from reading the book this is a good adventure story with a very interesting premise, good plot-turns and the usual weaknesses: the mandatory love-story (if you can call it that) is off-the-peg, and the hero is so bland and all-American that the only explanation is a file marked "all-purpose hero" which US film-makers get first day in their "shouting at actors 101" course. (But hey, if it works for 300 million movies, why not use it for another one.)And of course a couple of logic-holes, but all of that is too common for made-for-TV fantasy movies to really complain about it.But the supporting casts is, in my opinion, a joy: I love Sam, and the alien, and of course the main baddie. In the case of the baddie because I'm just a sucker for athletic evil bad guys making moves on the damsel in distress, extra bonus if the villain knows how to handle a sword.Sam, because he is everything an interesting hero should be: you get to learn his whole story only after a while, and he has the doubts and weaknesses and moments of indecisiveness that the first-billed character lacks. And the female lead is pretty good, too.Compared to the books or to recent LotR-movies this certainly is disappointing. Viewed as a made-for-TV movie, it's entertaining, uses original ideas and is clearly above the average. Pity the series was never made/aired.**For those who read the book before:** The movie doesn't follow the books, and for good reasons. The books were award-winning, not bestselling because they were too realistic, too thought-provoking. Too many things in them would blow the chances of a TV series pilot to smithereens. Using some dead European guy most US-Americans never heard of as a protagonist wasn't half of the problem, but keep in mind how irreligious and pragmatic he was (remember his idea on how to get strips for binding material? See what I mean?) and the occurrence of drugs, sex and violence and it should be clear that changes had to be made. I prefer whole-hearted changes that create new heroes and situations to half-hearted ones which leave a shell of the book-character.As it is, the movie isn't retelling the book, it's just loosely based on it. It uses the settings and some plot ideas of the book, but with changes to make sure that main stream audiences won't be put off. If that's acceptable to you, this might be an interesting movie for you.

chazzchezz I re-watched this today, and still like it. Phillip Jose Farmer's works were always fun but no great classics, so I don't mind that the movie deviated a lot from any of the books. Books is books, movies is movies. The scenery of New Zealand is almost worth watching just to see it - it is truly spectacular. The story is the expected thud and blunder of folks showing up nekkid on a new world, so I was willing to put up with that just to get the riverboat launched. Hale, Sam Clements, and Nero seem interesting enough and good enough; with this kind of movie, the plot and the effects are mostly what matters. Of course, with Sam Clements on board, we could expect more inventions with the flavor of the "Connecticut Yankee ...". I hope that they make more of these -- c