So I don’t think I can honestly give this book a fair shake. For one thing, it’s too famous, too goofy, and too parodied. I voraciously watched the 1996 movie version that had Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer and David Thewlis in it. I’ve even seen the 1970s version with Michael York and Burt Lancaster. And of course, there’s the famous South Park parody of it, that I swear I will never wipe my brain of.
So the book is actually quite short and kind of boring. Everything that happens in the movie version happens here, and there’s not really a lot of additional stuff the movie wasn’t able to convey. Instead, the movie version (and trust and believe that I realize the movie version is truly very very very bad), is actually kind of better because you have wonderful actors hamming it up left and right. Ron Perlman, man!
Anyway, the book suffers from a few giant issues, especially in today’s clime: one, there’s almost no stakes. There’s nothing here that really remotely resembles the world I live in, and so because science isn’t actually full of Doctor Moreau’s it doesn’t work. It’s kind of a Heart of Darkness story a couple years early, except that Heart of Darkness covered real territory and this doesn’t.
And then the other big issue is that once you decide to accept the premise of the novel, the main character becomes unrepentantly racist. If I am supposed to feel sympathy for the animal/creatures, than I cannot accept his superior-ass attitude.
(Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Doctor_Moreau)
