There are some critics and thinkers who posit that mediocrity is worse than out-and-out failure, but the really pernicious thing about mediocrity is that it's so banal that it's more difficult to get productively agitated about than the truly awful. Arguably, that is. I'm sorry that I seem to be so circuitous, but I'm trying to give a proper account of the state of thought into which I found myself thrust by "The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box." This movie's title indicates that it could be the first of a series, and sure enough,the movie's script was adapted from a popular fantasy book by G.P. Taylor that is the first of a series,
not under the rubric "The Adventurer" but rather "Mariah Mundi" who is the lead character of the book and whose name probably doesn't look great on a movie poster. Not that Mariah, a late teen in Victorian-era England, is really much of an adventurer. In this picture he's a fellow who's obliged to do some hopping around London to find his younger brother Felix, who's been kidnapped by the minions of Otto Luger (Sam Neill) on account of having half of an amulet that leads to a realm in which resides the changing-stuff-to-gold "Midas Box" of the movie's subtitle, an object of enormous power as you of course can imagine.